


Shape Shift and Trick

by Paranormal_Shitness



Category: Batman (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Angst, Author’s legal status is pimp, Digital Art, Drug Addiction, Fan Art, Fuck Scott Lobdell, Multi, Resurrection, Sex Work, Slow Burn, This Jason is an active sexworker, new 52 denial, self abuse, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2018-11-07 01:00:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11048001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paranormal_Shitness/pseuds/Paranormal_Shitness
Summary: Roy's spotting trains through grief when Jason stumbles on the only lead he could care about now that Lian is dead.





	1. A Spoon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  [playlist](https://play.google.com/music/listen?authuser&u=0#/pl/AMaBXylJHvzm_cE3r0q8m1SrToVlHEdjqaJkga1FAhihWt904sw6NgR-tpF9m0Pxk3jU72YUmAbEyThcDvwLbmwnR1EEQIvy9g%3D%3D)   
> 

It's been about six months since Jason last saw him, and the time hasn't been kind. Not that that's a surprise considering the rumors. Both of Jason's worlds have been on fire chattering about the Teen Titan's rogue former archer. The capes are all worried, trying to track his movements. The criminals seem shaken. It's not often one of them picks up a gun and a knife and sees shit through. Jason has to say he respects it. Even if he can't respect the reason or the execution. He also has to say that whatever he doesn't respect about Roy Harper, he's been there too.

Jason Todd's been a lot of places. 

He knows life's on a roundabout and people are always getting off at the same stops.

He finds Roy in an old beaten down motel. A similar scene to the one in which Jason had left him.

For a moment the thought that he has it together enough to afford a room is comforting. Maybe he's not so far gone as people have been saying. That hope all flies out the window when he gets to the front desk and finds the office conspicuously abandoned.

A squatter's paradise huh? Well it looks like this little slice of heaven is about to get a brand new door to door salesman named The Red Hood.

Squatting really is the smartest and most economical way to rent. If he didn't have a crazy rich murderous cult princess paying his housing he'd probably be living completely rent free too. He's never really been the type for fixed expenses of a personal nature, but knowing Roy it's not an economical choice to be here is it?

A nice immigrant family that doesn't speak much English answers the second door he tries. Jason knows enough Mandarin to ask for the red leaning giant. They point him to room 20 on the very end with extreme prejudice. Looks like he got his point across. 

One foot in front of the other. A point of annoyance crossing a vacant parking lot. His knuckles sound louder against the wood of the door than expected. They echo oddly. So it's a cheap and hollow door. Looks like the kinda thing that oughta be on the inside not the outside.

Unsurprisingly nothing happens. A second time, knuckles wrapping hollowly on the door. He can hear a shuffle of movement inside, and then he feels it in that way that's gotta be instinct, someone leveling a gun right at the peep hole, the exact right height to blow his fucking brains out even through the helmet at this range.

'I'm opening the door,' Roy says on the other side. His voice sounds fucked out. Jason's gotten that kind of scratch to his words after catching too long a train in the john down at Rucky's Ring. Either Roy's been sucking way too much dick for his smack or he's been doing an awful lot of screaming. Jason's bet's on the latter option.

Latches clank on the other side of the door, which Jason just can't understand because the thing is probably made out of construction paper. Didn't realize people in the contracting word took colloquialisms so seriously. The door creeks open like a pair of rusty nuts flapping from an old nudist's pelvis in high velocity wind. Once the door's open Roy leans out through the crack in it, slightly unsteady on his feet.

'Wow,' Jason says before he can get a word in, 'You look like shit.'

'Glad to see you agree with my ex,' Roy snaps. It hasn't got the usual bite he throws behind his rebuttals though. Jason's not stupid. He can tell one illness from another. That's not the heroin he thinks. It's what he's trying to get her to save him from. All that fuckin pain. 'So what are you doing here, Dick's little brother?'

Jason's sympathy for him vanishes in an instant. It happens in a split second. Too fast for Roy to track, and that Is the drugs. Jason brings his leg up and then kicks out into the bottom corner of the door sending it flying out of Roy's tenuous grip and smashing into the door stop. The walls and the eves of the shitty little motel shake with the force as Jason barges in, and slams himself down on the couch like he owns the place.

'What the fuck are you doing?' Roy asks, slowly turning to regard him with complete bewilderment.

Jason gives him a nonchalant look from behind the lenses of his helmet. 'Making myself at home. What's yours is mine and all that.'

'Since fucking when, Jason? That's big fucking talk from someone who's never even put out,' Roy shouts, crossing the floor. It's a mistake, but Roy doesn't realize it. He doesn't know why Jason's here and he doesn't understand Jason's ego. He pulls the same move, and because Roy's obviously in the middle of a crash, it works twice. This time, the soul of Jason's boot collides with Roy's shin. 

And Roy goes down like a ton of bricks, chin smashing hard against the authentic concrete flooring, bouncing like a ball.

'I'm sorry Roy, did you not get what you paid for?' Jason nags.

Roy grumbles into the floor. He's got nothing to say. Because he hasn't paid Jason for fuck all let alone a fuck.

'Look, I know it seems unlikely but I'm gonna need you to realize, while you go and pop one of those beers out of your cooler for me, that I'm not just here in your shitty little squat motel just to kick back and shoot the shit with my Predecessor's ex,' Jason explains.

Roy groans. Gravel shifts on the concrete under his weight as he gets his feet back under him. 'Why are you here then?' he asks as he walks painstakingly to the cooler and pulls a slightly chilled beer out of it. When he holds it out for Jason to take his hand, the good one the one he's got left, is shaking. Can't aim worth a shit like that. Jason doesn't mention it.

'Little bit of league business,' Jason explains as he pops the top on the tall can. Steel Mill. Lovely. One of those joys in life. Like drinking a dog's piss.

Roy makes a face. 'Justice?'

'Assassin's,' Jason corrects. 

Which of course makes a lot more sense and is something Roy's much more likely to listen to right now. 

'Gimme'a back beat on this one, cause word's on the street that the fire in your heart's flown the coop. Not sure how, but your little kitten's purring on Talia's lap right now and we all know she doesn't get in good with anyone without an ulterior motive.'

'Cheshire?'

'Yeah little miss disappearing act, reappeared in the most unexpected place, wouldn'ya say?'

'Fuck,' Roy mutters. 'Yeah.'

There's a moment of pause, Roy stands there with the second knuckle of his index finger wedged between his teeth, thinking. Jason wonders if he picked that up from Dick or if Dick picked it up from him.

'You know her angle don't you?' he asked.

'Damn if you weren't trained by the knock off of the world's greatest detective,' Jason quipps.

Roy shoots him a dirty look. It matches the room. It matches the weird shit Jason shouldn't be thinking about right now.

'Hold up though,' he says interrupting his own self, 'Before we get any further into this, you look a little jonesy and I'm not about to have you dying on me during chitchat from sudden withdrawals, alright?' he clarifies, reaching into his jacket pocket. 'Not your brand, but it's the best Talia had in her pharmacy as I was hititng the road so you gotta deal.'

Roy goes completely silent. Stiff as a board, in more ways than one as soon as he sees the needle.

'How's your palate? Can you tell the difference between your main dance partner, and her twin sister?' Jason asks as he uncaps the needle, and plunges it deep into the little jar of morphine he'd nicked.

'I don't care, man. Give me 40,' Roy says as Jason turns the bottle on it's head and starts to retract the plunger. 'Holy fuck you're hot, did you know that?'

'Yeah,' Jason says nonchalantly. 'Tie yourself off, and sit down.'

Roy moves quick. Jason's still tapping the air out of the syringe by the time he's ready and waiting on the edge of the bed. He tries to keep it as casual as possible, when he gets up and stands in front of Roy. It'd be easier if he was level with the veins, and steadier on his knees, but it just seems vulgar. He doesn't need to even slap the skin on the inside of Roy's elbow. The track marks are dark, and pronounced. His veins are needy and primed. Jason slides the needle in like it's nothing, and presses down slow, watches Roy squirm. Thinks it's kind of fucked up that he's finding this a little hot too.

Not that Roy can probably tell, or even cares what he's thinking right now. 'Fuck that burns good,' he mutters. 'You know it's been a hell of a long time since anyone-' words trail off blissfully.

'Shot you up?' Jason asks, pulling the needle out and pressing the pad of his thumb to the puncture. Roy shudders.

'Yeah.'

Jason gives him an amused huff. 'Better now, old man?'

'Yeah,' Roy tells him dreamily as he lays back on the bed. 'But don't call me that.'

Jason huffs at him again.

'This is kinda unconfirmed so I want you to listen, be calm and not overreact to what I'm about to say,' Jason says, taking his seat on the couch once more.

'I don't know. I think I can manage.'

'I have reason to believe your daughter's grave's been desecrated,' Jason says.

Roy sits up like someone just ran an electrical current through his abdominal muscles. 'What?!'

His voice echoes in the small space. Like Jason's knuckles had echoed on the door. Wrongly. The whole situation's so fucked.

'We need to go to California, and exhume her to prove it but I've got reasons to believe her casket's empty.'

'Why?!' Roy demands. 'Someone stole Lian?! Why?!'

'Roy I don't know anything for sure, yet.'

'What do you fucking know?!'

Silence. A couple of birds flap their wings outside trying to outrun the emotional backlash Jason's facing and he hears it through that piece of shit door. A placating hand slumps Roy under the weight of his own bullshit.

'I've seen Cheshire a few times since she ended up by Talia's side again, but my position in the league singles me out from the other members so it took me a good long while to find a lead on what she could be doing there. As you know Talia has an advanced lab with cloning facilities-'

'Oh god,'

'No, shut up and listen, shit face. She's got this crazy lab and she's been using it to make, and I'm not even misquoting this, 'backups'. Fucked right? Point is Talia's got an angle to play on Cheshire. Think you said last time you were in contact, Jade was a little unhinged, but she's one of the leagues best operatives in it's history. That can't be passed up. She's an asset that needs to be repossessed every time she steps out of line. Well Talia's all paranoid about loosing her baby. What would happen if she saw someone who she wanted in the same position but further along? More helpless?'

'She'd make a move. Yeah.'

'I'm not sure. I can't say for certain but the last time I saw Cheshire it was when I was called to Talia's personal chambers. She took me out to the garden to discuss something, and who do I see but Cheshire, playing swords with a little girl. And at first I'm like. Damn that mini muppet looks fuck all familiar. Then it hit me where I was getting that De Ja Vu from,' Jason explains, pointing behind Roy to the picture of a smiling little girl lying frameless on the bedside table. 'Take that one with you everywhere don't you, big guy?'

Roy stares at the picture blankly. He doesn't move.

A long, long while passes before he says, 'You sure?'

'Like I said there's no way for me to be sure. Hell Talia might have just found a similar looking baby and replaced her.'

'No,' Roy insists. 'Not even Jade would stoop that low.'

Jason's not convinced of that, but he's not about to argue. 

Roy's sitting rigid on the edge of the bed, knuckles white where they grip the sheets. Tense. The air in the room feels like it's on fire with the awkward implications of the situation. Jason pouring over the interaction leading up to this. Every single one. Not simply this isntant but from the moment he met Roy until now. All the one sided flirting Jason enjoyed a bit too much, and the sexual tension Roy probably didn't realize was mutual. The banter, and the drinks, and the missions they'd seen together. Intel they'd shared. Those times Roy had invited Jason into his home for dinner and the three of them sat around the table together. Arsenal, The Red Hood, and a beautiful little girl Roy loved more than the world. It wasn't a very long history, but it felt heavy hovering over the situation he stood in now. 

Maybe Jason had been pretty fond of that snot nosed kid while she was around. She'd kind of made him feel like he was part of a normal fucking family instead of an orphan who joined a cult that worshiped a guy in a bat costume when he was 13. 

'Totally ruined your high didn't I,' Jason jokes. 

Roy doesn't make any move to acknowledge he's spoken. Just sits there. Still as a statue. Jason waves a hand in front of his eyes. 'Yo, you still home, cause I'm still callin'!' he tries.

He gets a vague blink for his efforts and a 'What do you want?'

Jason hisses indignantly. 'Hey okay, I was here for your sake and yours alone so stop with that shit.'

'Sorry.'

'Whatever fuck you,' he gripes. 'I was figuring that telling you something like this'd get you all fired up. Ready to go out and kick some league ass for your potentially resurrected daughter.'

'You think it's really her?' Roy asks.

'Am I really me?'

Blue eyes flick up and down Jason's body, and that tingle of sexual disquiet sneaks into his pelvis for a split second before he pushes it back away. It's not like that. And even if it was Roy doesn't know what the fuck he wants. Roy's never known what he wants he tried hitting on Jason in the first place. That takes some true confusion. 

'I wanna know everything you know about the league and I wanna know it yesterday,' Roy tells him. The tone of his voice is near Batman out of the mask. Jason returns to his seat in the chair and crosses his legs penitively.

'The League of Assassins, League of Shadows, or Garden of Allah, is a religious cult started by R'as Al Ghul at some unspecified point in history several centuries ago in the ancient middle east. They have a global span of operations, recruiting from every major country in the world and then some by preaching their pro ecological stance, and a strict but hypocritical prohibition of technology. Unknown to most members, they're not being trained as 'eco-warriors' to carry out God's will, but assassins. Initiates are put through rigorous hazing and training exercises I'd liken to marine basic until they've been completely rebuilt in the eyes of the demon's head. Ra's upholds that his place in this organization is to inspire fear in both believers and the sinful, uninitiated masses so that they follow God's path correctly, and fashions himself after the Gnostic Satan who fell from grace on God's orders. I'd say that their religious systems are probably right between old pre church Christianity and Islam. Their mission statement is that they'll eliminate advanced society and return the human race to it's rightful position living in small pocket communities throughout the globe under the one rule of the League.'

'That's fucking nuts,' Roy gripes. 

'No more nuts than Batman. There's shit I agree with and shit I don't. Most of the people they kill are really just shit folks. And everyone can get behind the idea of small government.'

'The league ruling the entire world isn't really small government.'

'Like I said some things,' Jason reiterates. 'Like I don't believe in God.'

'Death didn't come with any visions of the allmighty?" Roy asks.

Jason shoots him a dirty look. 

'What? Ollie said he went to heaven when he died and Hal was his spirit guide.'

'No. None of that happened, and I really doubt Ollie knows what he's talking about if he thinks he was in heaven.'

'Yeah it's pretty narcissistic of him saying that.'

Jason hums in agreement. 'It's not important though. What matters is the League's full of fanatic crazies, and the only way to get inside is to play along with a stupid complicated game. I can do it. Jade can do it. And I know you're an ex government agent, Roy, so you could probably pull it off but I don't know if Roy Harper would be welcome in the League. They pick certain types for their little club, and your long, recorded history of drug abuse could just as easily make you less desirable as a recruit as more.'

'Damn.'

'Yeah. Only reason I'm even kind of in is because Talia's got a soft spot for me between her legs and in her wallet. Otherwise I'm sure there'd be some league spy looking up my entire past and gutting it on a sacrificial altar. Which wouldn't be pretty. Sorta like telling the whole Mormon congregation I'm not wearing underwear and watchin them turn on me.'

'Damner,' Roy reiterates.

'Which is why I'm bringing you in as a candidate for the manbat serum,'

Roy gives him a look, doesn't say anything, just stares at him. He's a little listless and high, but keyed in. 'What?' he demands.

'The cleansing right for those who've become 'sullied with the dirt of the world' involves turning addicts and sick people into giant half man half bat monstrosities,' Jason explains.

'No. I'm not seeing my daughter as a giant bat man.'

'Don't think she'd think it was cool and fun like you were one of those theme park furries?'

At that, Roy gets unsteadily to his feet and throws a sloppy punch in his general direction. He misses but it’s enough to tell Jason he should shut his fucking face. A skill he generally has to be reminded to utilize. Damn he misses hanging out with Roy before all this shit, when the archer would spend time hitting on him and making him feel-

No Roy's never made him feel anything. Jason isn’t a school girl. He's been around the flirting block one too many times with one too many johns.

The couch back pressing low into Jason's spine feels rigid and uncomfortable in the same way Roy looks. Casually, Jason stands up, pushes Roy back a few steps, and pats him on the shoulder.

'Tell you what,' he says. 'Get yourself together, flush you pride down the toilet like it's a bunch of oxys you have no script for and the police are at that cardboard cut out you call a front door right now and I'll get your little girl back, but if you take one more swing at me Harper I swear to god I'll leave you here, rescue her myself and keep her as my sidekick, you got that?'

'Fuck you,' Roy spits.

'Great to see we're on the same page, buddy.'

Roy listens. Jason drops the time and address for a rendezvous on the dresser on his way out the door. Roy doesn't watch him leave.


	2. A Ghost

Roy's at the diner when Jason walks through the door. He slaps a set of keys down on the table, and says, 'Don't tell Talia.'

Roy shoots a blank look at them over his chili fries. So Jason steals one. Sits down. There's a moment of silence. Roy sitting heavy under the gravity of the situation in front of him. Jason keeps eating his fries and he doesn't say anything. 

'You look funny with the helmet open like that,' Roy says after a bit. 

Jason makes a noise of nonchalance around the ball of grease in his mouth.

'Damn,' Roy says then, picking up the keys. 'I do not wanna do this.'

'Can't imagine any sane father would,' Jason tells him.

Roy sighs, reaches down into his boot, and slams a twenty on the table. 'Let's get it over with.'

The fries come with them as they go and Jason waves a salute to the wait staff when they think to maybe stop him from stealing their basket. 

'Where'd you park?' Roy asks him on the street.

Jason points him to the roof of a building across it. 

The flight is tense, quiet. Jason runs the solitaire function on his helmet to pass the time because there's nothing either of them wants to talk about.

It's nearly 0300 on the West Coast when they land on a Queen Industries building and bug out. 

The cemetery isn't like a Gotham cemetery. Jason can feel it in the earth, through the metal soles of his boots. Something in the ground there that isn't here. Whatever current had urged him back out of oblivion missing. Lian's grave looks like any normal grave. The grass doesn't look as solid as it should though. When Roy digs his boot into it, it's lying in a sheet over the dirt underneath.

'Oh God,' Roy whispers. His voice rattles in him as it comes. Like it's being dragged out of his body by reality. 

Jason makes a noise of agreement as he peels the grass back. 

They dig for what feels like years before they hit the six foot mark and their shovels strike wood. Roy's face is obscure underneath layers of dirt, eyes hidden by his mask, but Jason can smell the fear on him as he takes the crowbar Jason hands over. The wood makes a shrieking sound as it splits from it's metal brides.

'No pearl in this clam,' Jason jokes.

Roy slams the coffin lid so hard it scares it's own self into jumping. 'Where do we go now?' he asks.

'Safehouse,' Jason says, scrambling up the side of the pit. He offers a hand down before saying, 'Nearby. Get some sleep. Then tomorrow we get ready.'

'As if anyone could sleep like this,' Roy mutters.

Despite his protests a little more morphine is the perfect lullaby for a jonesing addict. Jason runs their suits through the laundry while he naps the stress out, and picks some hair dye up from the corner store. A pack of black to touch up his roots again, and a pack of brown for Roy.

The ass wakes up as he's combing pigment into his own hair, rolls over, and doses himself. 

'Here,' Jason says as he throws the unopened dye in Roy's direction.

Roy groans, but otherwise doesn't protest. It holds the silence. The overall lack of communication on this little field trip. Jason ignores it. Tries to tell himself he's fine with how quiet everything is.

They take turns showering, and suiting up. It's about 01000 when Jason stops to tune Roy up a little and loads him into the plane which the entire office building has kindly chosen to ignore through out their morning. 

Roy doses up again on the way, and stares blank out the window at the ocean underneath them. 

'Just about half way, now, Jason says as they pass over the transition from ocean to ice.

'Man this is fucked,' Roy says. His voice is even scratchier over Jason's headset. 

'Yeah.'

'I can't believe this is really happening,'

'We don't know what's happening yet, Roy," Jason reminds him.

'I gotta get clean again,' Roy mutters.

'Don't worry about it until we know what's happening.'

Roy chuckles at nothing, and falls back into silence.

When they land he's asleep. Drooling on the window. Jason doesn't bother to properly waking him before he pulls the prosthetic off his arm and drags the guy out of the passenger's seat and onto the runway. A number of Ghuls are skulking about on the platform preforming their duties. Jason hails them as Roy regains his bearings, and they scurry over.

'Tell Talia I'm here, and take this one down to the serum prep,' he says more to the group than any particular individual.

Roy does a good job protesting as they haul him away. Jason wonders how much of it's an act exactly. Which is good. He loves to be kept guessing. 

Two Ghuls lead him to Talia without addressing him. It had taken Jason a long time to understand the hierarchy in the league, and it still makes him uncomfortable to be so far above another human being but he plays his part regardless.

Talia's in her gardens when they find her, lounging on a bench with her fingers tangled up in Cheshire's over thick hair to braid it.

'I can't say I was expecting you, beloved,' she says smoothly. Jade glares at him. He doesn't take it personally. She's like that with everyone. 

He shrugs. 'Found someone I thought could use saving.'

Talia smiles. Her dark lips curl harsh. More mean than pretty, but too beautiful not to acknowledge. 'It's good to see you taking an interest in humanity's immortal soul,' she says.

'Gotham's also a bit boring this time of year. I was sort of wondering if there's any business I could be-'

'How sweet to see my dear beloved so invested in pleasing me,' Talia interrupts. Her attentions turn to Cheshire as she continues with, 'My other pets could do to learn from you.'

Jade glares at him harder.

'I think perhaps that should be your new assignment, Jason. I want to see my bird teach my cat some manners. And as it so happens, there is an errand the two of you could run together,' she says in that soft, sharp tone she uses when she's vindictively pleased. 'I've got some sensitive information I'd like run down to the lab. But it shouldn't touch untrustworthy hands. So as Ubu is away from us, the both of you can take it together. It's in the manilla envelope. My nightstand,' Talia instructs, pointing into her bedroom.

Cheshire moves to follow directions so quickly that it's clear she wants distance between her and the other woman.

'Bat boy,' she says derisively as she passes him.

'Pussy cat,' he throws back. 

'I can do this alone, you know,' she hisses as she collects the envelope.

He chuckles. 'She's wants us to fight,' he tells her.

'So she sends us on petty errands?' Jade asks.

'Yep.'

'Crazy bitch.'

It's a pot/kettle situation but Jason doesn't point it out to her because it would definitely give Talia what she wanted. Easier to pit too pets against each other than let them unite into a force. Not that Jason ever would have considered taking Cheshire's side with that little girl on the table. Kids are sacred. Kids stay out of it. Jade sinned by letting her daughter become a pawn in this.

'Where is she,' Jason asks after two flights of stairs, while they're waiting for an elevator. 

'Who?' Jade asks.

'The little girl I saw you with last time,' Jason clarifies. 

Her fingers curl at her sides, green nails glittering dangerously under the fluorescent lights. 'None of your business, birdie.'

He shuts his mouth as they step onto the elevator and she ignores him the rest of the way to the lab.

It's a big room, full of equipment he can't name, and squirrelly looking people in lab coats. On their left is the serum prep landing area. A big glass tank with a bunch of shivering, naked men huddled in it. He lets her handle the talking while he sneaks over to check on Roy.

"Harper,' he hisses, through the perforated glass, and one of many heads of messy hair pops up to swivel in his direction. 'How ya hanging in there?' he asks as Roy makes his way to the glass. 

He's naked, shivering, hand clamped over his dick in what looks less like bashfulness and more like fear of frostbite. 'By the neck. Is that my ex wife behind you?'

'Maybe a little,' Jason says.

Roy shakes his head, and hides his face snug in his knees. 'Have you seen the girl?'

'Not yet. Doesn't seem like Jade has her. Which means its your job to get out of there, back to the plane, and then find her.'

'Hey bat!' Jade shouts, and the whole tank looks at her as Jason turns around. 'You done chatting with your family?'

'Yeah,' he says.

He lets her lead them back, nerves flaring a moment as she stops at the edge of the manbat tank and looks in on them huddled naked, shivering. If anyone would recognize Roy Harper despite a hair change it'd be her, but she doesn't. 

Talia smiles at them when they step back into the garden. 'Come sit with me,' she says in that soft, inviting tone that brokers no argument. So they do.

Jade takes her spot at Talia's feet up again, and Jason joins her on her bench. 

'Jade says your brother is dear friends with her ex husband,' Talia informs him.

'Really?' Jason asks, looking at Jade.

'Take that helmet off, Jason. It's rude,' Talia says then.

There's a bit more reluctance in following that instruction but he does regardless. 

'And yes,' she continues. 'I believe she said he was a Titan.'

'Dick never wanted me around his friends,' Jason says.

Talia simpers as Jade throws him a dirty look. 

'Which one did you marry, Jade?' he asks.

She sneers at him. 'The redhead.'

'Had three of those, I think,' Jason says. 

'The junkie,' Jade reiterates.

'They had a junkie on the team?' Jason asks.

She doesn't look convinced but Talia laughs. 'Grayson always has been too charitable but I didn't realize you had the same spirit, Jade.'

The look on Chshire's face could melt steel beams.

'You look Tired, little bird,' Talia says then.

Jason offers her a small smile. The kind he'd never use for anything other than show. ' Long flight,' he says.

'You're welcome to a nap,' she says, 'I'll have a Ghul make up a bed for you.'

He says his thanks and makes himself scarce as politely as possible. Pretends not to hear Jade hiss 'Fucking bitch,' as he walks away.

As soon as he's alone the anxiety sets in. Roy's naked in a tank full of crazies, and everything's hinging on him. He doesn't have the time to sleep. He needs to find a way to start burning this from both ends.

He's deep in the thinking he should have done before they got their when the door opens. Cheshire's wearing her mask when she slips through it. Her hair looks wild from the constant braiding and unbraiding it's just been through. It adds to the aesthetic of her ferality. 

'I know you're up to something, birdie,' she hisses.

'Oh, I'm up to-'

'Shhh,' she says, holding the tip of a manicured nail to his lips. 'I know what you're trying to do and I want in.'

Maybe sinners can repent after all.


	3. A Name

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [playlist](https://play.google.com/music/listen?authuser&u=0#/pl/AMaBXykf-3Sdgr5IlzbsOiaq_H4jNzAHO7G43EHLUfazxCl39lgLUjk4YLipUfHZEcXUzRJk5M0rBbDzsnePQjuEXKLPGQJXcA%3D%3D)
> 
> might be able to draft this into a comic like i want to at some point soon pray for me

By the time Jason's dealing with Jade Roy's managed to give his holder's and his pen the slip, and slide naked all the way back to the hangar for his arm. Which is about when he fucks up and people start to notice something is intensely wrong. 

The alarm goes off before Jason can figure out what exactly Jade knows and whether or not she's pulling some triple agent crap on him. 

'That's him!' she whispers, voice full of something Jason's not sure can be faked. Excitement, faith. 'He's here for her. That's why you asked, I know where she is. Come!'

Jason wants to ask who exactly they're here for but Cheshire's already booking it down the hallway. 'Stay with me, don't be seen!' she calls after herself, and Jason really gets the feeling this is a complete trap because he doesn't know shit about Cheshire, other than that she's probably killed more people in one moment than he could conceive of in a lifetime, and no one has ever been able to trust her.

'Where are we going?' he asks, after they duck out of sight of some Ghul's sprinting in the opposite direction.. 

'To where she's keeping her,' Jade hisses. 'Under lock and key. The same nannies that saw to her child. She told me so. Didn't even know she had a kid.'

'He's the worst of us so most people won't mention him,' Jason adds.

There's about six flights of stairs leading up from where they are, and they climb all of them. Jade's got this look in her eye by the time they hit the top that screams hell. It's a look Jason's seen before in both Talia and Lady Shiva.

'You,' she says, pointing to a sliding door with a key pad, 'Get me through the door. Now. It's how she's keeping me from my baby.'

'Is that how she's controlling you?' Jason asks, and he pulls the thermite out of his pocket. 

Jade doesn't answer. Crosses her arms so her billowy sleeves are folded up around her hands. So he moves on.

'How thick's the door?'

'6. Maybe 8 inches,' she tells him.

'Okay,' he says reaching into his belt for the blasting putty. 'This is gonna be fun. I hope he's down there giving them hell because there is no way they won't notice this.'

'Just do it.'

'You realize this is potential suicide for all of us,' Jason says.

'If this breakout stunt kills my baby, you'd better hope you're dead before I get to you,' she warns.

So he molds the putty around the thermite, sticks it to the wall and shoots it. 

The walls shiver around then like a nervous dog. Jade's screaming at him, and the extra kick from the blast only manages to help the thermite four inches through the door. They have about a full minute and a half before they have a full hole in the metal.

'It didn't work!' she shouts. 

'It just need s a little more time to do it's thing, which means we need to make sure we have it,' he explains.

They can already hear foosteps on the stairs. Jason glances down the stairwell with more than a little regret. 'Guess this is my breakup text,' he jokes.

'Better to go out with a bang than a fizzle,' she says. 

Jason almost kind of wants to like her. Which would be easier is she wasn't a mass murdering cunt, but at least if she had to be a cunt she's hade herself a witty cunt.

'They're a floor below us, Jason warns.

This noise comes out of her that sounds like someone strangling a mountain lion. 'Hurry up,' she shouts, kicking the wall by the door. Which does a fat lot of good but at least it shows she's not stupid enough to kick a bundle of lit thermite that's currently burning it's way diagonally through an 8 inch metal door with her delicate human feet. Which makes him wonder what thermite would do to Superman for a split second before the Ghuls are at the top of the landing, and he's aiming for center mass.

'Is Batman this slow?!' she demands from behind him.

They're lucky to be holding a choke point. The walls are starting to look like some overenthusiastic stay at home mom watched too much DIY and went crazy with the paint and kitchen sponges in a really unfortunate color. 

'How's the door. Jade?'

'It looks close.'

'Better be! We'll need to find another way out! Too many bodies!' 

'It's through! It's in the floor!'

'Hold the choke,' Jason instructs as he turns to reach his hands into the hole in the door, and heave. It slides open the same way a drawer slides out when it's off the track. 'No way to close this behind us!'

'I know,' Jade says as she slides past him into the room. 'Cover fire!'

'On it.'

It's not pretty, but it's satisfying, when the Ghul climbing over the pile of his siblings in arms looses his head. 

'Do You have radio contact with Roy?' she asks as she grabs a nanny.

Jason hears her hiss something at the poor woman before he responds, 'Haven't tried yet. Srt of in denial he's screwing up this bad.'

'Well maybe you should get over it! She's behind this door. You said you flew in?'

'Yeah,' Jason says as a ghul manages to struggle his way over bodies all the way to the busted door. His first bullet catches the guy in the shoulder. The second wings through his armpit, opening up an artery. 

'Then we'll fly out!' she shouts as she shoves the nanny's disembodied eye ball against the retinal scanner.

'Overkill,' Jason chides as the door slides shut behind them.

'It was not. They can't open the door without her eyes,' she explains.

'We could have brought her-'

'Momma?'

Everything stops as they both turn on a dime to look at who called Jade. One of Talia's nannies beat them to the punch, holding the girl on her lap with a hypodermic needle pressed against her throat. Syringe pink like a dog's severance slip. 

'Put her down,' Jade hisses as Jason takes aim.

The room is circular. Potted plants, plush carpets and pillows, children's toys. The nanny's sitting behind a low table with crayon drawings on it. It's not the place for this kind of shit.

'Mistress Talia-' the nanny starts.

'Now!' Jade shouts, and Jason really wishes he was Roy. Roy when he was sober. Roy at the top of his game because Roy could make this shot. Right through the syringe. The pink would open up like a paintball on impact and the Nanny would slump over, and the girl wouldn't see anything. She'd miss it all, and Jade could hold her head so she wouldn't look behind her at the Jackson Pollock of brain matter on the wall. He can feel his hand shaking with every beat of his heart, every inhale he takes.

'You should follow the rule's, Jade,' The nanny says, and Jason holds his breath, wills his heart not to beat, and squeezes. 

The little girl screams as the bullet wings through the shell of her ear and straight into the nanny's face. Closes her eyes as the nanny hits the wall like Kurt Cobain. And she keeps screaming as Jade scoops her up in her arms. She's still screaming when Cheshire rounds on him. There's Ghuls banging down the door.

'You shot my daughter!'

'Better than letting some psycho nanny euthanize her!!'

'Radio Roy!'

'There's no windows in this room, what good's he gonna do?'

'Radio Roy!' she shouts again, holding the girl to her chest. Jason could thank God the girl is done screaming and has settled on trying to calm herself down now that she's safe in her mother's arms.

Jason presses the button on the side of his helmet that tunes his frequency, and waits for that static to pick him up. 'Red to Red, pick me up,' he says while Cheshire comforts her kid behind him. 

'This is Red 1. Blew the op, they got me pinned.'

'Shit,' Jason hisses.

Jade gives him a look that dares him to fuck this up again.

'Green and I are at the target we have the prize, but we're pinned down too.'

'Well this is where we pull our heads out of our asses just far enough to kiss them for ruining all our friendships and hopes of backup,' Roy snarks over the line.

'Is he high?' Jade asks then.

Jason doesn't even have time to look at her before she starts in.

'What were you thinking?' she demands. 'Bringing him, high! on a stealth op. The kind of stupid thing someone like Slade would do.'

'Papa's high?' the little girl asks, and Jason knows right then there's no way in hell this isn't Lian. 

Lian. Not a clone. Real. Living breathing Lian. 

'This was supposed to be a lot longer a game,' Jason starts.

'Yeah, and his junkie ass blew it.'

'Don't call him that,' Lian demands.

Her ear is still bleeding, and there's a chunk missing out of it Jason can see now which feels like shit because if Roy had been here instead of him, if Roy had pulled the trigger instead of him, she would be fine. Not a scratch on her.

Jade is looking at her daughter like she's a complete stranger but Lian is steadfast in insisting, 'Don't call him that word. It's a bad word to say about people. It's mean and you can't say that about my dad.'

She's honestly kind of precious. Jason definitely wouldn't have been standing up for his mom like that at her age. He'd probably have been the one calling her names. 

'You hear that, Red?' Jason asks.

Roy doesn't respond.

'He's gone dark, we're on our own,' Jason informs the room to immediate protest from Lian. 

Jade opens her mouth to chide the girl, but Jason stops her, which is probably a stupid move. Leans down to establish eye contact. 'Hey, you remember me right?' he asks.

'Dick's brother,' she says, voice high and panicked. 

'Yeah,' Jason agrees. 'And you know how good Dick is?'

She nods.

'Well I'm better, okay.'

Jade scoffs, but he ignores her.

'I'm real good at handling everything when people fuck up. So I got htis covered. We just gotta find a way outta here.'

Jade's foot catches him hard in the thigh. 'Idiot,' she hisses. 'I have a teleporter. I take you out you to the plane. You secure the location, I teleport her out. We run.'

'What about Roy?' Jason asks.

'What about Roy?' she demands. Lian makes this choking sound he can't stomach.

'Fine I'll handle him,' Jason concedes. 'When you get down there he'll be in the plane.'

It goes down faster than he can process because time flies when shit sucks and everything about this, from the time he noticed Cheshire with the girl up to now, has sucked absolute nuts.

The hangar is empty on one side when Cheshire gets him down there. A group of Ghuls has Roy pinned down in an air duct that he somehow managed to squeeze himself into. He tries to think about it like a Doom level while he mows them down. They might be zany cult members but he knows some of these people. If any killing could be comfortable killing it's definitely not this.

'Took you long enough,' Roy says as he gracelessly curls himself out of the vent. 

'What happened?'

'Forgot to check my ammo,' Roy says, chuckling to himself but Jason really doesn't think it's funny.

'Get in the plane,' he snaps.

Roy gives him an eye as he passes but they really don't have much time for an argument. A cleared hanger only stays clear so long.

'You're lucky I could clean this up,' he says as follows the other man.

Roy hasn't got a damn thing to say back. When Jade pops into the room holding Lian he's snuggly in the plane as promised. 

'You didn't tell me it was a two seater,' she says, voice accusatory.

Jason sighs because he knew this was coming, and he doesn't have the time. ''Yeah, you're gonna have to sit in the big guy's lap.'

'No,' she says staunchly. 'You sit in his lap. I'm driving with Lian.'

Jason wants to argue but they have even less time now.

'I wanna sit with Papa,' Lian throws in as Jade climbs into the plane

'Not right now honey,' Jade tells her.

Time's ticking as Jason hauls himself into the backseat. Roy's face looks pale, and empty which he supposes isn't that surprising but it is irrelevant. He sits down between the other man's legs as Jade slides the cockpit shut. Glittery nails flick across controls.

Jason wants to pause strapping himself and the dope wonder behind him in to ask what she's doing but they don't have the time.

'Nice of them to fuel her up for you,' Jade says as she turns the engine on.

Jason watches over his shoulder as some particularly stupid Ghuls jump out of the hangar trying to grab hold of them and miss, bouncing to their deaths on the cliffs below. Fuck only hopes Lian doesn't have the same view.


	4. A Horse

,p>

'This Sucks!' Jason shouts, throwing his hands in the air like a toddler having a tantrum. 

They've managed to get about 200 miles away from Talia but there's only so far a two seater plane can fly three and a half people so they're stranded in the woods burying the damn thing in leaves to keep anyone in the air from spotting it. Lian's sitting off to herself glaring at them, and Roy's sleeping it off under a bush. 

'You can whine later,' Cheshire says as she throws an entire bush she hacked out of a thicket onto the plane. 

'No I can't. We're fucked! We need to find the nearest airport, and buy plane tickets to somewhere and I'd bet you my life Talia's sitting at home in her ivory tower turning off all my credit cards. Reporting them stolen.'

Jade gives him a flat look. 'Are you serious?'

'I'm a six foot hole of serious.'

'You're fucking broke?" she demands then, rounding on him.

Jason watches Lian press her hands down over her ears out of the corner of his eye.

'This is just one big shit show you're putting on isn't it?' Jade demands. 'Why are you even here? I thought Roy just asked you to help as a friend but you're dragging him around like some nurse maid. What's your stake in this? Does playing caretaker stoke your gimp flames?'

'I'm only here for the Kid,' Jason says.

Jade holds her hands out in implication. 'Well that's not unusual at all, is it?'

'I was trained to see to children first and foremost,' Jason argues.

'By who? Batman? Last I checked he was a little too good with children.'

'Stop it,' Lian says in this tone that could cut through glass.

They both look over at her and Jason has a split second of de ja vu. She looks a little like Roy when she glares but the massive wad of cotton taped to her right ear kind of lessens any intimidation that would have. It's amazing to see her alive. Maybe Jason hadn't known her that well before, but he'd been around. He'd met her. And fuck be damned if there's a more awesome child he's ever laid eyes on. She's just plain cool. Which he doesn't think that about most adults. And children always come first. Jason had felt that way before he'd ever met Batman. Back when he'd been her size. The only thing standing between his little sister and an army of adults who could care less about them. This wasn't even touching his pride. How often on a mission did anyone actually get that satisfaction of bringing the missing child home safe, alive, mostly unharmed?

'I gotta make a phone call,' he says then, redirecting things.

'Sure,' Jade snarks. 'I'll just hide this whole plane by myself then.'

'Thanks,' Jason chirps as he orders his helmet to call home.

Tommy picks up on the first ring because of course he fucking does. He has caller ID. 

'And to what do I owe the pleasure?' he asks. The smarm reeks even from where Jason's standing on the other side of the world.

'My position is 45 70733, 134 061882. I need directions to the nearest airport and four plane tickets home,' he says.

Tommy makes a bit of a spluttering noise on the other end. It's doctorly. 'This is all very sudden for me,' he says.

'Yeah it's sudden for me too, buddy, get me out of here.'

'Why are you in Russia anyway?' Tommy asks.

'Who's satellite do you think is broadcasting this message, Tommy?' Jason counters.

Tommy's breath rattles on the other end of the line. 'Fine I'll open Google Maps, but I don't know why you couldn't have done it from there considering you have daddy's fancy satellite.'

'Yeah, Tommy. I'm gonna connect to Google through the bat-system and compromise family intelligence because you know what why not? I love it when people know my tactics.'

'Bruce might,' Jason hears Tommy mutter to himself under the sound of rustling papers and clicking computer keys. 'Who's your entourage this time?' the man asks then.

Jason looks around at the broken family he's currently dragging out of hell. 'The Harpers,' he says.

'Is that some sort of team? I've never heard of them.'

Jason doesn't answer and Tommy doesn't push it. He watches the family. Lian sitting on the ground with her fists pressed into her cheeks. Jade hacking low hanging branches off trees with the on board machete. Roy, lying in the dirt under a bush with his arms over his head, hasn't moved at all so Jason decides to walk over and kick him a little for good measure. Not hard, but it gets him another dirty look from Lian.

Roy moves one of his arms slightly so he can redouble her offensive. Jason takes time to mute himself as Tommy relays the directions for his records.

'Harper,' he hisses. 'You over yourself yet?'

Roy huffs air at him, and covers his face back up. Idiot.

'I'm reserving tickets for you, but it's a long walk, and even then, there won't be any direct flights. There will have to be connections and layovers. It's going to be messy,' Tommy says.

Jason unmutes himself. 'You can't get us a car?'

'I suppose I could pay someone from the nearest organization to give you a ride from the next town onward,' Tommy says, but it'll take some finagling.' There's a pause becafore Tommy asks, 'Why Russia of all places?'

'Ask my other patrons after you've fixed this for me,' Jason says.

'I'll have to call you back once I've figured things out.'

'Alright.'

'But Jason,' Tommy adds before he can kill the line. 'This will cost you.'

'I know.'

The natural sounds of the forest taking back over is more than surreal for a moment. Like his brain has turned from one side to the other. Flipped in a frying pan.

'You almost done with that Jade?' he asks

'Yeah,' she responds forcefully, 'No thanks to either of you.'

'You said I couldn't lift the branches,' Lian protests. 

Jade holds of a hand of placating iridescent green claws. 'I didn't mean you, sweetheart,' and in the moments it takes her to turn her attention to Roy it's like she's become a different person. Someone toxic and horrible. 'I was talking about your father.'

'Don't talk mean about papa,' Lian says staunchly.

'Come on, we have to get out of here before they catch up,' Jason throws in. 'We've got a long walk before we can bed down for the night.'

Lian stands up and starts dusting off her little white pants instantly. Roy's raised her the way any father in the line of duty should. The way Bruce raised them. To be soldiers. To know when action was their only option and never shut down in the face of adversity. He's gotta wonder how much of it's her natural temperament having two beasts for parents but it's hard to separate nurture from nature.

The three of them take a moment to slip backpacks on, hand out water rations between themselves.

'We're headed north east,' he informs the group once they've finished, pointing the way. 

Lian starts the march with her head hung, and her fists balled at her sides. Jade doesn't even glance at Roy as she passes him so Jason takes it on himself to haul the man to his feet.

They fall into step behind the girls. Roy's prosthetic is heavy around his shoulders. Roy's feet fumbling beside his. As they move, the distance between them widens until Jason feels like he won't be overheard if he whispers.

'What's up with you man?' he asks.

Roy makes an odd grunt. 

'Are you crashing? Do you need another hit?'

'Yeah but no- I'm...' Jason watches him trail off.

'What?'

'I shouldn't be here right now. I can't be here. She shouldn't be around me. I don't deserve this,' Roy explains.

'What about what she deserves?' Jason asks.

The sigh that rattles out of Roy's chest sounds like an agonal breath. And maybe in some way it is. He looks dead inside. Enough that Jason's wondering if his first course of action on home soil should be burying the guy in unsanctified ground.

'I'm too much of a mess. She can't even look at me.'

'Look, I know you didn't really have the time to get ready, but we couldn't have waited for you to go through rehab before we figured out what was up.'

'I know,' Roy gripes. 'I just think maybe after this it might be good for me to take a backseat, and I just know Jade's not gonna wanna give her back so why try anyway?'

'Because she's your daughter, and she needs you. Jade might be kinda cool but she's a cunt, and if you leave Lian with her she'll either die again or grow up to be another cunt. Maybe even a bigger cunt. Do you want that, Roy? Your daughter getting raised by a mass murdering international terrorist cunt?'

Roy sighs again, 'No.'

'Well if you don't clean your act the fuck up right now, and start thinking about how to safely ween yourself off the opioids again, I'm gonna take her and neither of you will ever see either of us again in your lives,' Jason warns.

Roy makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat and Jason kicks him in the ankle.

It's quiet walking after that. Quiet drudgery. No conversation. They've got nothing to say. Occasionally Jade gives Lian reassurances, but that's mostly it. Roy gets the shakes so bad he can't keep going before Lian even seems like she's getting tired, and Jason drops him behind a copse of trees for cover while he administers a slightly lower dose than he did two days ago. 

'This is so fucked up,' Roy gripes as he pulls the needle back out.

Jason agrees wordlessly, and helps him back on his feet.

Within an hour or two the sun's setting and the chill is starting to bite through their clothes. Roy's feeling a little better with his head a little less clear and his body a little less racked by withdrawal. Walking on his own, looking more directly at their tiny leader more often. 

'I'm tired,' the little girl says once the sun on horizon is dimming like the light in a hallway as a door closes on it.

'We have to keep going, baby,' Jade says, rubbing a hand over her tiny shoulder.

'But I'm so cold it hurts,' Lian complains.

'Come here, Lian,' Roy says then in an oddly forced tone. Jason can tell he's trying too hard to compensate now, and it almost makes him wanna choke on his own spit to avoid any potential second hand embarrassment. 'Climb up on my back,'

'Can you carry her and the pack she's got?' Jason asks.

'More humane than her carrying it on her own,' Roy argues. So Jason drops it.

They keep on until his feet ache in his boots, and Roy's limping, and Jade looks like a drowned rat. It's freezing. The wind is biting through their clothes. Jason can see Lian shivering as she clings to her father's back.

'Do you think we'll see any bears, papa?' Lian asks through chattering teeth.

'Better hope not,' Roy says in that overly chipper tone and it's one Jason remembers in his own father so viscerally it makes him feel nauseous. 

By the time they hit the first house, the four of them are packed into a tight nit formation with Lian and Roy in the center, trying to press in close for warmth. It's not that cold for Russia, Jason knows. They're lucky to be in such a temperate area. But it's still colder than Gotham.

Tommy calls them around when they hit the village center. 

'There's an inn on the upper west side of town where there's a gentleman who I was put into contact with after some trouble. He doesn't speak English but that shouldn't be a problem for you. He's got a car he says can fit you all, but bear in mind he's Russian when I repeat that to you, and they treat four door sedans like city buses on occasion.'

'Great,' Jason tells him. 'If this doesn't work out I'm biting your dick off.'

Tommy chuckles on the other end of the line. 'Well I'd best make myself scarce on the off chance.'

'The off chance my mouth can sling shot around the world and devour your penis,' Jason grumbles as the line goes dead.

Their contact is a thin man with hair so blonde he looks bald. He shoves them into a beat up two door sedan, and drives them through silence.

Jason glances over his shoulder a couple of times to catch Roy and Lian napping together. Jade looks intensely dissatisfied slammed against the door, but she has the decency not to complain. 

When they finally stop, and get out, their driver leads them into a house, introduces his wife, and insists they all sit for a late dinner despite the fact that Jade looks murderous, Roy's shaking like a chihuahua in a hurricane, and Lian is so tired her consciousness has fallen through reality.

They gather around the table awkwardly, with the woman lamenting that she'd already put her sons to sleep. Once Lian falls face first into her meat, they're allowed to bed down in the living room. Sleep for the long trip they have in the morning.


	5. A Hostel

Jason wakes up to Roy having a seizure. Convulsions. It's so familiar he feels as small as Lian looks sleeping in a mess of blankets a few feet from them. He remembers the drill like it's been poured into his muscles. Has the needle in Roy's arm before he even comes to and starts trying to push through it. When the plunger hits flush, and he sits back, relieved, against the couch, Lian's staring at him.

'Why'd you do that?' she asks. Her tone is not calm, or even impassive. It's the tone of a child who's seeing him as a monster. He hates how used to it he is.

He licks his lips trying to find the words to explain this. He can remember the exact same situation, walking in on his father shooting his mother up while she was unconscious like this and being livid. What had his father said? 'You rather have a junkie mother or a dead one?' No that seems insensitive. 

'Drugs can kill you two ways,' he starts instead. 'You either aren't doing any and you take too much or you're doing them and you don't take enough.'

'How does he stop then?' she asks, face and voice falling from hardened into concerned.

'Real carefully.'

'Is papa gonna be okay?' she asks then, and he feels horrible knowing that the only right thing to say to that is something he can't guarantee.

'Your dad's been through it and back before,' he says instead of affirming anything.

'Do you think he's mad at me?' she asks then.

Jason feels confusion hit him like a train. 'For what?'

'For going away so he had to do the drugs,' she says.

It hurts. Jason can see it in her eyes that it hurts but worse he can feel it. Like getting socked in the sternum. Only it's deeper than skin.

'Hey, you listen, this isn't your fault,' Jason starts but before he can get anywhere with that Jade cuts him off.

'He's right. It's your father's fault for loosing you in the first place,' she says.

Both Jason and Lian freeze at the words. Neither of them knows what to say. Jason watches Lian's brows crease and her little mouth work around words she can't seem to form . It's too adult a conversation for her to be having. Too much blame, and regret.

'Shut your fucking mouth, Jade,' Jason snaps for her.

Cheshire's mouth quirks at the edges. 'Oh,' she says, 'So you're taking his side.'

'I don't think it's a hard side to chose when you're the other option,' Jason tells her.

Her nostrils flare like the billows Alfred used to use to stoke fires. 

'When are we leaving?' she asks then.

'Good question,' Jason praises.

He takes the time to call Tommy again while Jade gently kicks Roy awake.

'Did you get that info I sent you last night?' he asks when Tommy picks up.

'As a matter of fact,' Tommy says. 'I did. Very interesting. Everything's been worked out to your specifications, and you should be at the airport within six hours depending on traffic. Your host has agreed to take you the rest of the way in return for some pharmaceuticals I may or may not have access to.'

'Great, I'll see you when I get there,' Jason agrees.

Roy's a dazed child blinking around him at the world when Jason hangs up. His eyes move over Jade, onto Jason, and then to Lian. When his face lights up it's unnaturally. His muscles move wrong under the skin maybe? Control shot by the numbing effects of the morphine. 

'Hey baby,' he says in that tone. That fucking tone. Jason really hates that tone. 'How are you?'

Jason gets up and walks down the short hallway to find their host before he has to sit through anymore of this. By the time they're in the living room again, Jade's started an argument with both her daughter and her ex. The blond man gives Jason a confused look, almost offended by the family shouting in his living room. 

'Americans,' Jason tells him, and the man nods.

It's a long drive ahead of them. Long, and tiring. The lead up to an even longer and more tiring commercial air journey. One that'll loose them all their equipment right at it's start. But there's no quelling the bullshit in the backseat.

To Roy's credit at least he's trying now but it's more difficult than Jason had ever imagined it would be to stand. The whole thing reminds him so viscerally of his own parents that he's legitimately starting to wonder if Bruce was ever the start of his daddy issues.

He puts his helmet on, and turns the sound dampeners up as far as they can go so he's sitting in his own little world of buzzing silence.

Then it's the airport. Shooting Roy up with another dose before they go through customs and have to ditch everything. Dealing with the way he watches, and that little jump of arousal it causes. Ignoring everything as he walks off with their things in a shopping bag and tosses it in a dumpster. Ticket pick up. Customs. 

He hits the remote detonator on his helmet while Roy spends more money than he has on food and trinkets trying to impress Lian.

Everything's making him sick at this point. The idea of being on a plane. The idea of sitting with Roy and his family in the midst of their little reunion. He feels ill considering it. Just wants to get out. 

The flight boards. Jason casts a glance at Lian walking between her parents, reaches out, and grabs hold of her hand. She lets him. Maybe she feels as sick as he does.

They sit broken up on the plane. Seats assigned by Tommy. Jason and Lian together mid way through the two tiny isles. Roy and Jade at the back. Jade argues about the seating but security deals with her.

'Is momma gonna be okay?' she asks as they duct tape Cheshire to her seat.

'If she'd stop fighting things would be easier for her that's for sure,' Jason tells her.

'She never stops,' Lian says then.

It seems like a morbid thing for a kid her age to say about one of her parents so he changes the subject. 'You ever fly on a plane before?'

'Oh yeah lots'a times. Papa likes to move around a lot so we fly on planes whenever we move. He says planes are safer than cars,' Lian explains.

'Do you like planes?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'All the people are rude, and they push you, and the lines are so long, and then people poke you with wands. It's not as bad here though.'

'Yeah we got through security pretty fast,' Jason agrees.

'Mhm,'

Behind them Jade's still yelling, but she's mostly unintelligible by this point. Jason glances back at her and catches Roy patting her on the arm listlessly for some comfort. Doesn't seem effected.

'Tell me something, kid,' he says then.

'Yeah?' Lian asks.

'What do you think of your parents?'

Lian scrunches her nose at the question. 'I love papa, and mamma is nice when she's with me, but papa says she's a bad person.'

'Yeah, she's hurt a lot of people,' Jason agrees.

Lian gives him a look that makes him feel even more over exposed without his helmet. 'Don't you hurt people?' she asks.

'Yeah. Sometimes. Sometimes you have to hurt people for them to learn. But I do my best not to hurt more people than I help,' Jason explains. 'Like your dad.'

'Yeah,' Lian says. 'But my mom's not like that is she?'

'No.'

'Is papa gonna be okay?' Lian asks then, looking around her seat back.

'Roy?' Jason casts another glance back with her. 'He'll be fine. He just needs some time to get himself together. It's something I wanted to talk to you about.'

'Why?'

'Because I was wondering if you'd like to spend some time with me while he does.'

'Would that make it easier?' Lian asks, turning back to him. 

'I think so,' Jason says, but he honestly doesn't know. He just knows he can't leave her with them right now. 

Liam frowns. 'But won't he miss me? Didn't he do the stuff because he missed me and mama took me away?'

'Are you mad at her?" Jason asks. 

'Yeah. It's my job to keep papa from getting sick again and she took me away and now he's sick again.'

'Hey,' Jason says then, resting the tips of his fingers against her arm gently. 'You know that's not your job right?'

Lian shakes her little head. 'It is,' she assures him, and fuck if that doesn't feel like someone sucking his soul out through his feet. This odd, sad, bottoming sensation. Like sinking into something.

'Well, now he knows you're back, and he's happier than anything about that, but you know he feels bad letting you see him like this. He told me he wants a little time to get clean before he takes you home,' Jason explains.

Lian nods her head. 'He's not tryn'a get rid'a me because I messed up and let him get sick again, is he?'

'No,' Jason insists, 'Hey, look at me,' she has her mother's eyes but they aren't so vicious and deadly in her face. 'You didn't mess up, okay? I know it feels like that, but someone really bad hurt you. He did this not you. He hurt your dad, and he hurt you. Roy thought he lost you forever that's why he's sick again.'

'Who?' she asks.

'Prometheus,' Jason explains.

'If he did this then we have to hurt him back.'

'Course. I even know someone that might be able to tell us where he is. When you and me get back to Gotham, he's the first person we're gonna see.'

The look on her face then should disturb him considering her age. Instead it feels reassuring. It's good she's a fighter. She'll need that spirit when they land.


	6. A Client

Roy jostles him awake half way through the flight, sober, and looking miserable for it. 'How's she doing?'

'She blames herself,' Jason says, rubbing sleep out of his eyes so he can get a good look at the child slumped in the seat next to him.

'Fuck,' is Roy's quiet response. Then he asks, 'Hey, you sure Talia hasn't got a bead on us?'

'Last thing she'd expect me to do is fly commercial to fucking Alaska. She's gonna loose our trail at the village for a few days then finally follow us back to that guy's apartment, and he'll probably have bugged out by then so she'll be left chasing his ass for a while. We have time,' Jason assures him.

Roy grunts an acknowledgement. 'I hope you're right,' he says. 

Then there's another pause. Long and awkward. Jason tries to ignore that Roy is just sort of hovering in the isle, half stooped to look at his face. 

'Hey man thanks,' he says suddenly, and Jason slowly releases a breath he'd been holding to keep his cringe factor at bay. 'You've really helped me get my family back.'

'Yeah, you're welcome now go sit down,' Jason urges. It feels a bit shitty to be thanked when he knows things the other man doesn't.

It's only later when he's trying to get back to sleep that Roy's phrasing there begins to bother him. But it's not important he tells himself. The only important thing is getting Lian out of this.

When he wakes up next it's because the stewardess is trying to put his tray up. He appologises and sits up so he isn't' using the thing as a pillow anymore. As she leaves to check on the next row of passengers she mentions that they're about to begin decent which finally clicks in his mind as why she'd hated his tray.

He shakes Lian awake gently. 

'What?' she aks.

'We're almost there, and we gotta go quick, alright?'

'Okay,' she says, blinking around at the plane.

'Why?'

'We're still running aren't we?'

'Oh yeah.' She shrugs and stares out the window again. 'I'm glad we're getting off the plane. I'm done being bored,' she gripes.

'Yeah me too,' Jason agrees.

Decent begins sickeningly. Jason watches over Lian's head as the ground grows ever closer to the window. Snow on the Alaskan ground tells him it'll be even colder here. 

The runway is short. It's not a huge airport. Only about the size of a dime. It'll mean quicker disembarkment. Out the window he can see it. Their bid for freedom idle by the gate. One of Bruce's jets. The one he stole and stashed at the old Sacred Heart. It would have been completely out of place if not for the fact that they'd beat the sun there, and it sat only slightly distinguished from the darkness.

He wants to think he could kiss Tommy for this, and with enough money on the table he could bing himself to do it, he has, but it's probably more of an I'll look you in the eye without wincing for a few days sort of favor. 

They sit for a while, Jason playing it cool as he ever does, and then the disembarking begins. Single file row by row. Jason has Lian walk in front of them until they're out on the tarmac. Then he scoops her up and books it. Roy's at the back of the plane. He has a bit of time, and the heroin will slow him down. Jade won't be a problem until they cut her off her chair.

Lian fixes him with a somewhat offended look as he slides her into the cockpit. 

'What can I say? I hate commercial air,' he explains as he climbs up behind her. 'Now strap in.' 

He can almost hear Roy shouting over the roar of the engine as they peel back down the runway. 

It's a shorter and more direct trip on Bruce's dime. They skip like a stone across the country. Touching down quiet near rest stops for pee breaks. Completely untraceable with another red herring left behind them. And Lian has no idea she's been kidnapped, which is slick.

By the time they get to Tommy's they've been running three days. 

'You didn't tell me you were bringing a kid with you,' is the first thing he says on opening the door.

Jason fixes him with a glare and blows his bangs out of his own face. 

'Fine,' Tommy says, stepping out of the way. 'But I don't know how you're planning to pay me while you have baggage.'

'I'm sure you'll figure out how to get your money's worth but that's not my problem,' Jason says dismissively as he steers Lian by the shoulder inside.

'Why are we in an abandoned hospital?' Lian asks.

'Aesthetics,' Tommy and Jason answer in unison. Which is one of those deeply embarrassing things you can never seem to hide after having fucked someone. 

'Why is there a mummy?' The girl presses.

Jason laughs as Tommy crosses his arms over his chest. His face is unreadable under the bandages but his posture tells the story of someone who's patience is starting to run out.

'Forget him,' Jason tells her. 'Hey you wanna get us a pizza or something, old man?'

'You're more like him everyday,' Tommy mutters as he stalks off.

It kind of pisses Jason off. He hates being compared to Bruce but he doesn't have the time to deal with that annoyance. Instead he walks Lian into the waiting room, which Tommy's had redone like a living room with old furniture from his family home, and turns the TV on for her.

'You mind entertaining yourself for a bit while I go work something out with the mummy?' He aks.

'I guess not,' she says. 'But if he doesn't have cable I'm gonna eat everything tasty in his kitchen.'

'I support that,' Jason says as he follow's Tommy's exit.

He finds the man at the nurse station, ordering a pizza over the phone. It's quiet. They're two of the only people in a pretty big hospital. Jason leans up against the counter and waits for him to finish.

'Hey,' he says as the phone hits the cradle.

'Hey yourself,' Tommy gripes. 'Do you always have to be such a demanding bitch? "Get me plane tickets. Help me ditch my entourage. Raise this child I found. Buy me pizza."'

'Have you met any of my "brothers"?' Jason counters.

Tommy rolls his eyes. 

'Oh shut up you're just grumpy because you were expecting to get your dick wet at a discount.'

'Is that so wrong?' the man asks.

'It's typical,' Jason tells him. 

The glare he gets is satisfying.

'You know I'm not exactly child friendly,' Tommy warns then.

'Her father's a relapsed heroin addict and her mother's an international terrorist who nuked an entire country into dust in some hairbrained scheme to make bank selling weapons,' Jason explains. 'I mean I'm not exactly a model guardian either but I think this at least a marginal improvement.'

'Well,' Tommy says. 'Almost makes a man want to feel sorry.'

'You don't have to pretend you're not a snake in a human suit, Tommy. I know you don't feel anything other than entitlement,' Jason says.

'Well at least I feel something. Could be worse I could be Freis.'

'Freis would never hire me to blow him because I sucked Batman's dick once.'

Tommy holds up a finger under Jason's nose. 'Ah. But Freis has no taste.'

It gets Jason to laugh even if he's not exactly laughing with the man. 'When's the pizza get here?'

'Should be around a half hour or so,' Tommy assures.

'Kid's in the living room watching TV. Do you know if there are any private rooms available?'

It's kind of a mechanical act. He knows it doesn't look mechanical but it is. It has to be. He's never been the type to really find other people attractive. It happens once every couple of years and always catches him off guard, and Tommy's- Tommy's a fucking sad sack.

He sucks the guy's dick. Jacks him off so hard it'll probably hurt later. Tucks his teeth behind his lips and rubs them over that crest on the back of Tommy's head. Every trick he knows to make this quick. Efficient. Like he's waiting for the next chuck in a train at a shitty dive bar.

'You're such a prick,' Tommy says after blowing his load. 'Such a complete ass.'

Jason spits it onto the floor. Not because it's easier than swallowing, it's not, but because he's trying to be disrespectful. 'Didn't wanna miss pizza,' he says.

Tommy makes a sound that's somewhere between disgruntled and understanding. 'I don't know why I put up with you,' is his solemn sounding response as Jason mops his face on the inside of his shirt. 

It's an action that gets him a disgusted wince from the man. 

'You know you taste like diesel fuel right?' he asks then.

'Oh and what does Batman taste like?' Tommy sneers.

Jason scrapes his teeth across his tongue and spits again. 'Like he takes hormonal birth control.'

'Hear that stuff sucks,' Tommy comments as he does his pants back up.

Jason doesn't comment. He's been doing the same thing since Talia started getting weirdly baby crazy when Damian turned out to be in her words, 'a dud'. As if having an anchor baby you don't even tell the guy about for ten years isn't a stupid move that's bound to backfire somehow.

'I'm gonna go shower and brush my teeth,' he says.

Tommy gives him a long suffering sigh and says, 'Take your time.'

'Hey,' Jason snaps then. 'You treat that girl nice or I'm gonna bring Talia and Bruce down on you at once. And I'm holding you to that comment about taking my time.'


	7. A Story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The word 'Biscuits' is being used in this chapter specifically as slang for ecstasy.

Once he's clean and his teeth are thoroughly brushed there's a few things that need attending to. Mainly his lack of helmet. Which is starting to make his skin itch. He's not exactly comfortable enough with Tommy to happily show him his naked face. And he doesn't even have a mask.

Of course he can't imagine that getting into one of his safe houses will be easy right now with Talia owning most of them. And of the ones she didn't own he could never be quite sure which she'd located.

He can't imagine this isn't going to be a little bit touch and go but his mounting social phobia is really getting the better of him. Which won't be good for the kid he knows that much. She needs someone who at least appears to be stable in her life right now.

They're in the kitchen munching on the pizza when he comes down.

'Hey,' he says by way of greeting. 

Tommy, bandages half unwrapped so he can suckle down the grease, offers him a half wave. Lian gives him a much warmer smile around her bite of cheesy goodness.

'You two getting along?' He asks.

'She's already lectured me on gun and needle safety,' Tommy informs him delightedly. 

'Well it's about time someone did,' Jason says, and Lian nods her head.

'He had his gun lying there with the safety off next to an uncapped needle,' she tattles.

Jason turns a mock frown on Tommy. 'For shame Dr Elliot.'

'It's not like I expected to childproof,' the man counters. As if he would have bothered had he known.

'That's how you get AIDS,' Lian warns.

Tommy opens his mouth to say something back but Jason beats him to the punch with, 'Well so long as you two are alright here, there's something I gotta take care of real quick. Shouldn't take more than an hour tops.'

-

It takes three. Talia's Ghuls are crawling all over his shit. They're up to their necks. At least eight of his safe houses have been completely ransacked. One he doesn't even bother to check because it seems to be currently burning down.

He's forced to make his way to a dead drop of things he set up a while back in case of emergency. A small crate anchored under one of the piers his father used to work when he was just a kid. Inside is like a time capsule. It's from almost two years ago when he was trying to take Bruce down every second of his life and so the gear is a little outdated. Designed to fit a completely different mindset approach and intention.

Not like he can gripe but there's no radio or internet connection in this model of the helmet which may prove to be a problem. It's also got a much more limited sight field, utilizing a lower number of cameras, and a more clunky internal display.

He checks the albuteral dispenser, and finds it empty because at the time he stashed this shit he obviously didn't really care. Whatever. Tommy probably has a canister or two lying around.

Beside the shitty helmet, the box has a small collection of stupidly over souped guns, and pills. Mostly pain killers. Some stimulants. He even finds a couple of biscuits floating around between bottles, maked with inviting little 'e's. Must have been an accidental inclusion but maybe Tommy will be a little more accommodating if he shares anyway. Guy's itching to get his pay off and always has a bitch to pitch over Jason's shitty adittude. 

Really if the guy wants a nice boy who sucked Batman off to call him daddy he should be shacking up with Dick. Dick might even do it free, but Jason's not about to give up his extra paycheck.

Crime ain't that lucrative when you're using it to invest in your community like a good gangster should. Cash slips away easy and there's nothing in figures. No banks. 

People like Tommy and Talia? They have banks. And it means Jason doesn't take a shred of skin of the backs of his working girls. So he can be for them the person he needed when he was on his ass. The kinda person people like his mother need.

He stashes the goods in the car he borrowed from Tommy, and hightails it back to the hospital.

-

'Where'd you find this kid?' Tommy asks as Jason walks back through the door with his goodie box.

'She's a baby Titan,' he explains.

'Like the Teen Titans?' Tommy presses like he can't believe what he's hearing.

'Yeah,' Jason says. 'Nightwing's her godfather.'

'I told you,' Lian sneers.

'Christ it's terrifying to see you capes breed,' Tommy says. The look on Lian's face is nothing but proud. 'Do you know what we spent the time you were gone, three hours by the way, doing? She beat me to hell and back shooting rats in the cellar.'

'You used a BB gun right?' Jason asks warily.

Tommy makes a motion with his head to broadcast the fact that he's rolling his eyes, 'No I thought we'd use my 50 calibers inside,' he snarks.

'I never know with you,' Jason bites.

'You're really one to talk. I'm definitely the less trigger happy between the two of us,' Tommy tells him, and he's right. They're probably both remembering the time Jason stopped in the middle of riding him to try and shoot a fly. In Jason's defense though he'd been hopped up on a bit too much speed and way too little sleep at the time.

'He's a better shot than you though,' Lian buts in.

'I'm very well aware of that, princess, thank you,' Tommy says.

And it's really weird actually. It's really really weird and almost kind of domestic. It gives him whiplash a bit. Hearing Tommy use a pet name in a non sarcastic way.

At least Lian got her father's charisma. It means Jason has one less thing to worry about.

-

By the time he's got his mask on the sun's setting, and Lian looks dog tired. Sitting at the television, head nodding.

'Damn, kiddo, we gotta get you to bed,' Jason says, patting her on the arm.

She grunts gently in response. Jason has to wonder if Roy was this quiet when he was her age, but imagining Roy tiny does something weird to his chest so he stops that abruptly.

She really does look like him when she squints at Jason through her exhausted haze. 

'Okay,' she says after a moment. As if she had to consider a proposition. 

'Come're,' Jason says then, scooping her up so she can sit on one of his forearms with her fingers knit behind his neck. He refuses to admit that it's heart warming to be close to her. This awesome tiny person. Roy's kid.

Roy is- fuck knows where he is but Jason just has to have faith he's alright. Has to tell himself Roy won't let himself die while Lian is waiting for him to come back.

And maybe when Roy comes back Jason can be there, with Lian. Safe, and-

What is he hoping for? That Roy will suddenly want him in their life. That's crazy. It's stupid. He just kidnapped the guy's daughter. Not to mention he's psychotic, and fucked up and clinically goddamn insane. He should still be in fucking Arkham. He has no place in a child's life. He should call Dick. Dick would know what to do if he were in Jason's shoes. Dick's good with kids and markedly less fucking bonko nuts. And Lian knows Dick better.

But he can't bring himself to let go. Dick would remove him from the equation entirely. And he wants so badly to belong. Not just anywhere. But with these two.

The worst part is probably the fact that he can see it having the potential to work out. Usually he'd never try because nothing but failure could possibly result from trying. But this seems like maybe- like maybe he won't think about it.

'How does your dad usually put you to sleep?' He asks as he sets her down on a visitor's chair in a private room, and starts making her bed.

'He doesn't. Rose usually reads to me or makes up a story,' Lian explains.

Jason frowns. 'Your dad doesn't usually put you to bed?' He asks, and can't help himself considering it his permanent position for a moment then.

'He works a lot,' she says around a yawn. 'But he always comes home. I hope he comes home soon this time.'

'Me too,' Jason agrees. It'd be nice to see Roy again and know how he's doing for certain. Have some control. Which is how he knows this layover childhood crush has gone way too far. So he changes the subject by pointing out the newly made bed.

'Lie down, I'm gonna tell you a story.'

She does so promptly, pulling the blankets up to her chin, and watching him expectantly with those big green eyes. It makes Jason feel like he's being put on the spot despite the fact that he stepped up to the plate. Especially as he thinks through everything and realizes he hasn't got a single child friendly story he can tell. Even from his own childhood.

'So,' he starts. 'What kinda story do you wanna hear?'

'Tell me about you,' she says unhelpfully.

He gives her a rueful chuckle. 'That's not a very happy story.'

'But I wanna know,' she insists with all the willful curiosity a child should have.

He sighs, eyes searching the ceiling for some better language to couch all his bullshit in. The right kind of auditory sugar to soften the blows he'd been dealt.

'Well I was born here in Gotham,' he says, and she nods. 'Down in the Narrows. In a little neighborhood called Crime Alley. It's all back streets not a single car street around you gotta hoof it through there on foot. It was damn near my whole world until I was 13.'

'What's it like?' She asks.

'Crowded. It was built before there were rules about how far buildings had to be apart. It looks dark even in the day and people from in there look like the walking dead.'

She giggles which is a little morbid but he chuckles along with her anyway.

'Who were your parents?' She asks.

The memory of them pulls at his lips and nose before he can help it. But it is always best to be honest with children he's found because they can smell lies. 'They were a couple of idiots,' he says.

She offers him a sympathetic frown.

'My father was in the local mob. A bunch'a guy's from back on the old rock trying to make itmin America. I guess they weren't all bad folks, but that's like saying not all cops are killers. Still there were guys who knew what it was supposed to be about to be in a gang. Protecting your neighborhood and the people in it. And there were assholes like my father who couldn't've gave a damn. He told me that the day I was born he tried to sell me but I was completely worthless. Don't know if I believe that. Anyway he sold my mother's things instead. Her family jewelry. The clothes off her back. Hell even her time. And that's why he said he didn't like me. Because if my mother spent her time with half the neighborhood to keep us fed then obviously he couldn't be sure I was his son. And I don't think he ever really wanted to believe I was his anyway. But everyone said I looked just like him so he gave in and married her.' Jason pauses before explaining:

'Because back then it woulda looked bad. Real real bad. Y'know if he hadn't. But it turned out the only reason ma was dating him in the first place was because he didn't live by the mob's code. See pa was dealing drugs as a side racket. He thought it'd be real smart to smuggle them in from outta the area even though the boss who ran Crime Alley was one of the hold outs on drugs at the time. Didn't want China dust blowing up on his doorstep. Didn't approve. His name was Sheeran,' he says almost feeling wistful on it. 'Mully Sheeran. And he knew all of us. Every face in Crime Alley. He had it memorized. He drove around in this low rider chevvy. All matt. Scrubbed the crome right off so it didn't reflect any light. Thing was blacker than ink. And he'd come rolling up to your door, the window would slide down and there he'd be in his hat with his cigar, asking if you needed food. Everybody loved Mully Sheeran but my father. My pa hated him. He said Mully was always stopping him making the big bucks. But all Mully was ever doing was keeping us safe. The whole neighborhood. He-he was like our guardian angel,' Jason explains.

She's sitting up on the bed now watching him intently.

'So my pa decided he was gonna do what he wanted Mully be damned, and ma was stupid enough to think that was the hottest thing. Or maybe she was just sick enough that heroin was the hottest thing. The problem was both of them got hooked on the smack.'

'Why?' She asks. 

Jason takes a deep, shaking breath before saying, 'Loads of reasons. I'm not sure exactly. I guess in the end it all comes down to life is painful for everyone, and everyone spends it trying to run from their pain but for some people it's just so much the only way they can run from it is drugs. I might think it was stupid but I can't say I blame them. It's not like I've never done drugs.'

'If that's not why you didn't like them then why?' She asks.

'Because they were selfish,' Jason explains. 'They never thought of anyone but themselves. People like my parents are the complete opposite of your dad. When you needed him he threw away the things he did that might hurt you or put you at risk. He did what he could to make sure you were safe. My parents didn't care how I felt as long as I didn't stop them doing what they wanted.'

She nods understandingly but he gives her a moment to think it over anyway.

'What did Mully do?' She asks then.

'What he should have. But before he had the chance to find out what was happening, my mother died because she was so sick.'

'What was she sick with?' Lian presses.

Jason shakes his head. 'I don't know. Trauma maybe. It might have been something she was born with too. It's hard to say I didn't know her that well. But when that happened, child services came and took me, and my little sister away. They put her with a foster family and they put me in a group home. It took me three weeks to escape and find my way home. By the time I got back Mully Sheeran had found out about what my father was doing and had him whacked.'

Lian's eyes are wide as she asks, 'What did you do?'

'What I'd learned from watching the people around me,' he says. 'By the time I was seven, when my father was killed, I knew the ins and outs of three jobs. Both the ones my father did and my mother's. Now my pa sold drugs, and he sold ladies' time but he wasn't so great at either, and for both those jobs you need to know folks so you can buy drugs or put a lady on the street and advertise her. But ma's job was easy right? I had all the time in the world, and there's always someone who's lonely. So I put myself to work. And when they fell asleep after, I'd steal little things they wouldn't notice. Take them to the pawn shop. I got real good at stealing. Worked my way up from cufflinks and five dollar bills all the way to hubcaps and tires. And I'd flip it all at a pawn shop, or a fence.'

She looks awed by his tiny self's entrepreneurial spirit. In retrospect it was pretty impressive and ambitious for a homeless kid.

'Eventually I made some friends by sharing my food and my money, and then they'd come and live near me, and we sort of became a group of kids selling what we could, living on our own. It was kind of loose knit but we were a community and when we needed each other we watched each other's backs. I grew up, from the time I was seven to the time I was thirteen, living on the streets like that and they were the closest thing I had to family. I think it kinda removed me from the rest of the Irish in Crime Alley to not be so tied down to my blood roots,' he explains.

'Why?' She asks.

'I guess when a community immigrates suddenly blood is all they have so they hold tight,' Jason says.

She nods in agreement.

'I got sucked back into family though,' he admits then. 'When I was thirteen I did something crazy that was either the best decision or the stupidest mistake I've ever made in my life.'

'What?' She asks.

'I tried to steal the tires off the batmobile.'

Her eyes swell to the size of saucers in her face and giddy laughter almost bubbles up in Jason's throat. 

'I managed to steal one too before he caught me.'

'Then what?'

'I hit him with a tire iron and called him a boob. And that's how I became Robin.'

'Like uncle Dick,' she says.

'Yeah. Him and me are like brothers,' Jason says. 'And that's more than most people know about me, so get to bed.'

'It's a good story,' she says as she lies back down. 'They should make a movie.'

'Wouldn't be as interesting as if they made your life a movie,' he tells her. Mostly just a lot of sucking down whole trains of dick in public bathrooms.

'Will you tell me about Batman tomorrow?' She asks.

He pulls another face. 'That's not really-' he doesn't think there's a way he can pg up his time in the bat clan. Bruce was essentially his first sugar daddy for one. And all that just lead up to his death which was- 'It's stuff I don't want to talk about.'

'Like papa doesn't talk about stuff that happened before I was born.' She says, clearly disappointed. So that's why she's so interested in his past. Her own parents are a mystery to her.

'Yeah,' he agrees. 'Sometimes things that have happened are just too painful.'

'Worse than everything you just said?' She asks.

It really puts things into perspective for a moment that now he looks back and thinks of those years on the street as simpler times.

'Yeah,' he tells her.

'I guess then I probably wouldn't wanna hear papa's story,' she says into her pillow.

'Maybe not,' he answers and then he follows it up with, 'now get some sleep,' and shuts the door behind him when he goes.

The hallways outside her room seems long and desolate. It makes him feel utterly alone as he stands there, trying to get up the executive function to figure out what to do next. 

'Quite the sob story,' Tommy comments. 'You might have me out done on tragic childhoods.'

'Glad to know you were eaves dropping,' Jason hisses as he steps away from the door and starts trudging down the hallway back toward the front entrance,

'Couldn't help myself. You are quite the mystery. About all I know about you is how daddy liked to fuck you,' Tommy says, following.

'Not like you've ever asked about anything else,' Jason tells him.

'Maybe it's because I know it would only bother you.'

'It'd be smart if you if you did,' Jason says.

Tommy makes a satisfied little sound in his throat. 'I am smart.'

'Smart enough to be the biggest douche I know,' Jason snaps.

'Oh come on, darling, I'm charitable enough to spend time with street trash like you,' Tommy says, emphasizing the word time to recognize Jason's euphemistic use of it when talking to  
Lian.

Jason scoffs. 'I'm so flattered.'

The entry way yawns around them as they come rushing into it, Jason spurred on by Tommy's bullshit, and Tommy trying to match pace.

'Well I like to put you at ease before laying you down gently in bed,' Tommy jokes.

Which stops Jason in his tracks. and spins him on his heel. 'Speaking of,' he says, as Tommy draws up short, clearly taken aback. 'I found a couple of biscuits in that care package I went out to fetch today.'

'Oh thank fuck,' Tommy says, shoulders dropping, 'you're so much more of a delight when you're not sober and ornery.'

Jason makes a sound of reluctant agreement. 'I'll go get them.'

-

They take their E with cognac because Tommy's pretentious. Then they sit there watching porn Jason's not into until it kicks in. Until they feel warm, and giddy, and Jason doesn't hate looking at Tommy's face, or letting the other man see his.

It's easier like this. No thinking. And he's twice as divorced from his body. Only half as annoyed when Tommy touches him. Really far away. Like it's some kinda dream. And if he squints Tommy looks a little like Roy without the bandages on. 

Sure okay maybe he's not as pretty but it's about fudging the details enough to fake it which Jason usually doesn't bother with, and Tommy likes a lot more than he'd ever let on. He's into brats no matter what he says. But Jason has to let the guy repair his ego sometimes even if he hates it. And right now he's in debt. He doesn't like to be in debt.

The drugs let him cum, but he's light years away when it happens. Somewhere that doesn't exist at a time that won't happen with a person who probably never wants to be around him again. He whines the word 'daddy' against Tommy's shoulder as he does it, and part of him is very distantly aware of the man's hand stroking soothingly through his hair when it happens.

That vague memory will probably upset him a bit later but he doesn't mind now.

Tommy groans, and rolls over once he finishes. Gathers Jason up to his chest in and hug that would never fly without chemical intervention and  
They lie there for a bit. Stuck together with drying sweat and semen. Reality creeping back in. They're both lucky Jason manages to pass out before it gets there.


	8. A Coldfront

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank u for the kind responses

He wakes up in a cold sweat because it's clawing up his throat. Raking fingernails up and down his delicate insides. Like if he opens his mouth around the harsh air it'll turn into a million spiders and crawl out. 

The lung cookie hits the floor by Tommy's bed. Dead and black and wet. And smoking never looked so good.

Shaking limbs as he tries to gain his bearings. There's still spunk dried on his thighs, crusted to the hair on his legs. His stomach is like a rock tumbler on nothing but pizza booze and pills. Light feels like a knife in the eyes.

It's a mother of a hang over.

He manages to get his feet under himself by the time Tommy walks out of the connected bathroom. The asshole has the gall to stand there, buck fucking naked, arms crossed, and watch like Jason is some museum exhibit.

'Good morning,' the man greets and Jason sneers at him. 

'Or fuck you too,' Tommy amends. 'Honestly you're just about the worst company.'

'You're one to talk,' Jason grumbles. 

'That may be true but I don't think I'm even as obstinate as you are.'

'Just love absolving yourself,' Jason gripes while he uses the nightstand as a bird stand to stay steady while he catches his feet.

Tommy makes a noise in his throat that sounds like the verbal version of a shrug. 'Maybe,' he says.

Jason mocks him silently as he teeters around the bed but it's ignored. Tommy's more than used to his shitty adittude after their long agrangment and obviously isn't in the mood to fight this early in the morning, which Jason's half glad for but also resents. Obviously if Tommy wants to avoid something he shouldn't be allowed but that's neither here nor there.

He showers. Pisses in the shower because it's a small shower and fuck Timmy Elliot. And pulls his clothes back on.

Street clothes aren't thick enough and he feels naked in them so he slaps his helmet on even if it's more conspicuous. An action that Tommy watches curiously.

'Is that really a good idea?' he asks.

'Are you really an asshole?' Jason counters.

Tommy shrugs at him physically this time.

'You seen the kid?' He asks then.

'Haven't left this room yet so no,' Tommy tells him.

Jason grunts angrily at the man as he opens the door.

'Oh by the way be careful you were pretty far gone last night and I'd hate to scrape you broken out of the stairwell,' Tommy calls after him.

He makes sure the door slams behind him as hard as possible. It makes his head throb, and his stomach jump up into his throat but he white knuckles through it before he heads down the hallway for the drug closet.

Pills on pills. Shelves of pills. Of packs. Bottles of liquid. Needles. He beelines straight for the 'z' section and rummages through three boxes of bullshit before he finds the zofran. It's a script made out for a Robert Dally so Jason assumes that's him, and takes one like a normal damn pill instead of a dissolving tablet.

He stops feeling like he's gonna puke almost instantly. Then he picks up some oxis and takes a few. Pockets the rest of the bottles, and trudges down stairs.

Lian already has herself set up in front of the tv with an assortment of breakfast snacks around her. Bags of cereal ripped out of their boxes. The leftover pizza from last night. Some snack bars he wouldn't have ever expected Tommy to buy.

'Looks like a bunch'a junk,' he says, leaning over the back of the sectional to look at her sitting on the floor.

She turns her head to look at him with a bleary expression.

'Bad sleep?' He asks.

'Nightmares,' she explains.

He frowns. 'Watta'bout?'

'Things,' she says cryptically.

'It's not 'cause'a the story I told you last night?' He asks.

'No. I mean,' she stares at the tv like she can see right through it to the face of some god telling her some cosmic truth she had never yet considered in her tiny life. 'I guess happy endings only really happen in made up stories.'

And damn if that doesn't suck to hear coming out of her mouth. Even if it is true. Maybe raising a child is a lesson in heartbreak as you watch their spirit die. His body feels heavy and sluggish as he moves around the couch. She's sitting on the floor looking out of this world on thinking. Jumps when he lays his hand on her shoulder.

'Hey,' he says softly. 'Maybe in real life we don't get many happy endings but I've been through some pretty rough shit in my life and it's all worked out pretty okay.' Maybe it's a bit of a lie. Maybe he's not really okay. But the world's kept spinning through all the tragedies and personal Armageddons. He's still sitting there, breathing, even if air feels like fire most days and he'd give anything for it to just stop.

'Yeah,' she says.

'Happy endings happen they just aren't endings in real life,' he presses and she nods. 'Of course that means that maybe bad things will happen again but we can always find our way back to another happy ending and live there a little while.'

'Was Batman your happy ending?' She asks.

It makes him choke. It makes him feel sick again even through the pills. It turns the world on it's head. To hear her ask that. To hear those words out of her mouth. And she's a child but she's just read through him harder than any adult he's ever met. He feels skewered and set up over a fire to roast.

'Something like that,' he says and his voice comes out more shaky than he'd like and of course she notices.

'What happened after?' She asks.

He shrugs. But here this kid is looking at his life and knowing beyond the shadow of any doubt that it's a miserable one. One he'd rather not live. One he's trapped in.

'This,' he tells her.

'Do you think that'll happen to me? Was my happy ending at the beginning?'

Something in Jason feels tiny, and broken. He wants to cry and he's not sure if the feeling is for himself or for her but it's not something he usually deals with. 

'No,' he says. 'No cause I'm here, and there's a hundred other grown ups here who are gonna make sure things get better. You've always got somebody in your corner because you're a Titan, kid. If something happened to your dad everything would be fine because everyone would pull together for you,' he promises, and he doesn't know if it's true but fuck does he want to believe that the Titans would have her back and it's hard to imagine they wouldn't with how he feels right now looking at her shattered little face.

'No matter what happens you'll be okay,' he promises.

She nods but he can tell it's just to placate him.

'Fine then,' he says, refusing to think about this dreary depressing shit anymore. 'What do you wanna do today?'

'I don't know,' she says.

'Well there's loads to do in Gotham. We could go see a movie or go to a park. And there's tons of cool abandoned places to explore. Plus y'know museums and we have an aquarium that's got a nice gift shop.'

'I like aquariums,' she says, sounding a little less like a wisened battle beaten old woman and more like the eight year old she is.

'Alright, you wanna go?' He asks.

She nods a little less emphatically than he'd like but he's not letting it deter him. So he pops off the couch, and trudges back up the stairs to Tommy's room.

'You should get that elevator fixed,' he says as disregards knocking entirely.

Tommy's still sitting naked on the couch in there, watching what looks like a marathon of Golden Girls. 

'It works I just don't have it hooked up to the generator because it's expensive and no one comes through here anyway,' he explains.

'Didn't you used to have an entire staff of drugged homeless people?' Jason asks.

'Yes, and while I did the elevators ran but then Bruce took offense and so it's just me.'

'Sad,' Jason says. 'Anyway I'm taking Lian to the aquarium-'

'Not dressed like that you're not,' Tommy inturrupts. 'I know Talia might have been your first benefactor but I'm not about to loose your life to her.'

'Aw don't go sentimental,' Jason gripes.

'I'm not. I just don't want her messing with my things, and I'd hate to find a replacement cock sucker. Hard position to fill these days,' Tommy explains.

Jason sneers at him.

'So take the helmet off, and I'll give you this nice platinum master card I have here and you can go nuts. Buy the kid a mazzeratti. I don't care.'

Jason growls as he pulls the helmet off and sets it on the coffee table.

'Good, boy,' Tommy says, and hands him the card.

Jason spits on his floor as he makes his way back out. Which he'd never even try with Talia but Tommy lets him get away with it.

-

The aquarium is big. He follows Lian as she gets herself lost in the fish. The tired exhaustion from that morning is almost entirely replaced by her unadulterated hunger to touch a jelly fish which is calming. His nerves are settled down into a low buzz under the surface of his skin rather than their typical roar. 

He almost feels at ease which makes him conspicuously aware of the package tucked into the back of his wasteband. The only thing reminding him to stay alert amongst the threats of public existence. 

When they get to the penguin tank, it's a bit quiet. The middle of the day on a school day. Not many people bringing their kids to an aquarium besides crazy vigilante babysitters. 

'I like penguins,' she says, crouching in front of the grass to imitate the way they walk at them. A few excited penguins crowd in to get a better look at the antics.

'I'm not that fond,' he comments.

'Why? They're cute!' is the response he gets as she continues her odd dance with the birds. 

Kids are fucking weird. One moment she's as somber and collected as an adult the next she's sober in public doing this shit.

'Well I have to deal with the penguin that roosts in town kinda regularly and he's a smarmy bastard,' Jason explains.

'Ew,' she says, wiggling her arms in some sort of fusion between the chicken duck dance and Eskista.

He buys her a penguin plush and a coloring book at the gift shop, and takes her out for some pho on the way home.

-

Tommy's waiting for them when they get back, a look of vague interest on his face that tells Jason he hadn't really expected them to live through the trip. Asshole.

'Well glad to see you're kicking,' he comments as Jason steers Lian down the hallway to drop her things off in her room.

'Glad to see you're still a dripping douche,' Jason snaps.

Lian's facing the other way but he can feel her roll his eyes at him.

'Go put your stuff down,' he says, turning to Tommy.

Tommy stands up off the couch, and dusts his gloved hands together. Jason's lips curl involuntarily which he can't imagine is a good look on anyone but the guy still cocks his head and croons,'Oh, pretty bird.'

Jason wants to puke for a second. 'Don't call me that.'

His tone is cold and hard but the man just laughs at it.

'You limp dick, waffle cocked motherfucker you think you're so fucking special don't you, you sack of fucking shit?' he slides out with.

Tommy gives him a grin and says, 'I don't need to think that for it to be true.'

Jason shakes his head. 'No, Tommy. Talia Al Ghul is special. You're just an asshat I'm using to further my goals. If you didn't have the resources, most of which I gave you in some way or another by being a good fucking informant, I wouldn't be here and you'd be sucking your own dick like the sad sack you are. You're not special. Your father was special.'

Which is the penultimate of blows on a shit sack like Tommy Elliot. Jason watches him to begin deflating before turning on his heel and following Lian down the hallway, ignoring whatever half thought comeback Tommy shouts after him because he doesn't need the last word when he got the last punch.

'You good in here?' He asks, sticking his head through the door to check on Lian.

'Yeah,' she says.

'Cool.'

'Why are you living with him?' She asks suddenly.

'Wha'do'ya mean?

'I mean you hate him but you live in his house,' she says.

'Well usually I stay in one of Talia's houses but she's a little mad at me over this whole business with you. Tommy's just a back up and that's why he's three cunts and a half wrapped up in a trench coat at all times. It's an inferiority thing. So he gets himself all high on ego. You gotta really tap dance on his spine like you're Satan to keep him in line,' Jason explains.

She gives him a little laugh then says, 'Why don't you just kill him and take everything?'

It makes him do a double take because there she is fluffing a plush penguin, looking innocent as anything while she asks him why he hasn't murdered his sugar daddy already and she's fucking eight. Goddamn do they start them young. It makes sense for her to think like that considering her parents are a government agent with a license to kill and a super terrorist but it's fucked up on a level he can't handle even if he'd been the same way at her age. Which he had.

Looking at a murderous child aged beyond their years by trauma is different on the other side of the line. It feels less like seeing a sibling in arms and more like seeing a train wreck happen for eighteen whole straight years.

'Well I would have to commit fraud to get his money then and that would just be a stupid ass thing to go to prison for,' he says.

She nods stalwartly, then mutters, 'Might be easier though,' under her breath and damn if that isn't creepy.

'Well,' he says, 'Why don't you stay here a bit, work on coloring some of that book, and I'm gonna go check the heat to see how hard Talia's coming after us.'

She nods, but he gets a cold feeling leaving her alone like this. Like she resents him for it. Not that he could say why that thought occurs to him.

-

The city's quiet but he keeps an ear down on it's pulse like it's a beat and he's chasing frisson. 

On the street the homeless are his many eyes and ears in exchange for fair protection and free services whenever they should need them. They hardly recognize him without the hood in his civvies but he's implanted certain code phrases in the social interaction of his own so the people he trusts will always know.

They tell him the Ghuls have swept the city end to end on his trail. That several of his most important informants are dead and mangled needing money to put them in graves and keep their families out of debt. Others are laid up in hospitals needing even more cash.

It's a blow, but she hasn't started dismantling his organization yet so he's alright.

He has to make a move soon though. Strike back. Fortify his borders. Something. Leaving his people undefended any longer is just plain stupid.

-

'War room,' Jason says as he walks back through the front doors.

Tommy's in the waiting room watching Lian color, and jumps at the sudden intrusion before he can help himself.

'Such a hurry,' he chides as he shuffles to his feet to follow Jason up the stairs.

Jason takes them two at a time just to spite him and rockets into the guy's bedroom the second he hits the second floor.

'Jason honestly,' Tommy complains.

'I've lost six men, Tommy, I need you to get me a meeting with the town Big Bird.'

Tommy gives him a look that's somewhere between overly pleased and calculatingly removed. 'My but don't you have the most interesting life, Red.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eskista is the proper word for Ethiopian shoulder dancing and it's really cool so you should google it.


	9. Chokehold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I just wanna put out there that this isn’t a sad hooker story and Jason is a continuing working relationship with Tommy because 1) the sex will be a job no matter what 2) Tommy doesn’t force him to do any emotional labor and he can be fully honest about any negative feelings he has toward the guy because Tommy doesn’t know any other way of being treated and that’s not a common thing to find in a client (they need to be coddled and told they’re different than other clients and emotionally reassured frequently it’s obnoxious I would not be able to deal with it myself)
> 
> I feel Jason, based on what I know of him as a character, would be much more uncomfortable providing emotional intimacy than allowing himself to dissociate through mediocre to vaguely negative sexual experiences which is the same thing for him as dissociating through a shift at a minimum wage job but it pays as much money as he says it should and he makes his own hours
> 
> Tommy’s not perfect or anything but he’s not a bad client he’s just a general fucking asshole as a person

Tommy asks him for three days and Jason promises him a toothy blowjob in return. It gets him a wince but Tommy insists three days is the best he can do so he's probably not lying. 

Jason sleeps on it. Wakes up. Makes sure Tommy know he's a shit stain, and slaps his helmet back on.

'Oh no,' Tommy starts but Jason flips him the bird and bugs out before he can be stopped.

First stop is the police impound where he liberates a motorcycle for himself. There's a moment of cool down where he lies low in a warehouse near the narrows making sure the thing doesn't have any tracking devices on it. Police sirens wailing by. Idiots. Then he's on the road again headed for the mainland. 

The bluffs of the palisades ride up over his shoulder, staring down at him through their many eyes. Pocked caves in the ravines of their faces. The cave mouth yawns discretely between two bushes where he stashes the bike.

The civvies he's been in for days are really biting on his nerves. He needs his digs pretty bad. Especially if he's gonna survive how hard Talia's coming after him with his hold on Gotham intact. 

Bruce hasn't upped the security so much as switched it around since last time. Makes it so he has to go slow but it doesn't stop him getting in.

He won't find many supplies inside. Their weapons are intentionally useless for his purposes and their gear isn't designed for the same stresssors his is. Which means he'll be picking from the bare essentials. Smoke bombs, canisters of stimulant he can add into his breathing system, other performance enhancers, cathitors and piss bags for long stretches without bathroom breaks, extra dense nutrition bars for when there's no stopping to eat. Alfred's recipie. He grabs a few fistfuls of those and stuffs them into his jean pockets.

Then he goes looking for what he actually needs. The updated numbers on Bruce's JLA identification card so he can order himself replacements for his fancy clothes. They're in the database hidden in a few odd files and it's more luck than skill finding them. He gives Tim a reluctant mental thank you for imparting the knowledge of where to start, and sets the defenses to time out just long enough for him to stroll back out the way he came in.

Alfred doesn't even come knocking to see what's up.

Typical.

By the time he's back at the hospital, untouched and unmolested he might add, he's already called into Kord industries to make his order. The nervous sounding woman on the other side of the line kept asking him 'safety questions' and he kept insisting if he had Batman's info she shouldn't have to ask. It was a bigger argument than he'd expected.

Lian's waiting at the door when he opens it, a sour, flat look on her face.

'Dr Mummy left,' she informs him as he opens his mouth to ask what's wrong. Then she turns on her heel and trudges away from the door, arms hanging limp infront of her slouched little form. The drama. Honestly. Well she is Jade's daughter.

'Did he say where he was going?'

'He said he wouldn't tell me,' she says without turning around to even look at him so he follows her into the kitchen. Where she stops, turns to him halfway. 'There's nothing to eat I want Thai food.'

'Oh-Kay,' he says, pulling the cellphone Tommy grave him out of his pocket to bring up the information on his checking account.

A roiling wickedness rolls through him as the screen loads. It says in sad little font '$4.25'

Dialing Tommy is something he does almost on instinct. 

The line picks up with a click and before Tommy can say anything Jason barks, 'Start oinking paypig!' As loud as he can into the receiver.

Lian gives him a shocked look as silence beats out over the line. Tommy clears his throat nervously at the exact moment she realizes who he’s calling and looses interest.

And then Jason hears another voice. A croaky, wet sounding little voice with a high accent clipping it into upper crust poshness. 'I thought you said you were taking a call from the Red Hood not some hooker.'

'Well-' Tommy starts but Jason rushes to cut him off.

'Wait am I on speaker phone? Is that penguin?'

'Yes,' Tommy agrees.

It starts in his guts and slams into the back of his teeth full force before smashing out of him. A peel of laughter like he hasn't had in months. Crackling against the voice modulators in his helmet.

Another beat of silence stretches between all of them as Lian marches across the room to the cupboards and opens one.

'Are you done?' Tommy asks.

Jason clutches his stomach as he brings himself down from the comedic high. 'Yeah,' he says. 'That was just funnier than how you look when you blow your load.' 

Tommy makes a resigned noise of frustration but he ignores it.

'Hey pengy.'

'I've always known you're a notoriously hard man to get ahold of, Hood. When Dr Elliot came calling I have to admit I didn't think he had the connections. Didn't know it was so easy to get your number,' Penguin drawls over the line, sounding somewhere between English nobility and a southern oil baron.

'It's not. Dr. Hush is a family friend. Might as well have known me since I was still in a leotard. But it's good to know you're interested. Always good to keep an eye on the market. Not that you could ever afford me,' Jason jokes.

Lian has climbed half way into the cupboard at this point to look for something and he's starting to get curious what she's up to but this conversation seems like it might be important. It's kind of making him a little less fed up with Tommy's general existence to catch him making moves like this.

'This new and juicy information has nothing to do with my interest. My taste in the working type tends to run a bit more classic,' the croaky little man explains.

'Big words for a man who doesn't know what I look like,' Jason presses.

'Well now that the flirting's through,' Tommy inturuppts in an uncharacteristically tight voice.

'Calm down Cuckles The Clown. I'd never be able to suck off a dead fish besides Wadly Bird only goes straight.'

Penguin grunts in annoyed agreement with the statement. 

'So why are we on speaker phone with little Wet Willy anyway?' Jason asks then.

He hears Tommy take a breath to speak as the Penguin clears his throat but Penguin talks first, 'I've heard we have similar concerns.'

'Mm?' Jason asks as Lian returns from inside the cupboard with an arm full of macaroni boxes.

'Gotham's had a certain type of visitor lately which hasn't been too good for business. Unusual for our tourism,' Penguin says.

'M-hm.'

Lian's clawing the boxes open, and he has the thought maybe he should stop her but it seems like the worst conversation to duck out on.

'I'd heard they were after you and thought you might be in for a little business.'

'If the offer was right,' Jason says, but he doesn't have the time to play it smooth because Lian's suddenly brought the boxes of macaroni over her head and begun emptying them onto the lines of stove tops. 'Woah! Woah hey,' he shouts.

There's a chorus of confusion on the other end of the line as Jason vaults the vegetable station and grabs a box of pasta out of her tiny hands.

'Is everything alright?' Tommy asks as Lian screams at him.

'Well we've hit the inevitable meltdown,' Jason says.

'There's sedatives-'

'No, Tommy,' Jason chides as he hears the Penguin ask 'Is that a child?'

'It's perfectly safe I'll tell you how to dose her.'

'Tommy I said no!'

'Why on earth do you two have a child?' Penguin asks incredulously which is when Lian bites him and makes a run for the hallway.

'Aw fuck she's gone rabid,' Jason hisses, shaking his unfortunately naked hand.

'She's what?' Tommy demands.

'She bit me.'

'See this is why you don't steal eight year olds from heroin addicts,' Tommy says condescendingly.

'I'll keep that in mind next time- just! Shut up and go out in the hallway to order us some Thai food. She's hungry.'

'I'm already on the phone with you,' Tommy objects.

'Then borrow one from bird brain I don't care figure it the fuck out while the important people talk.'

There's a shuffling and the sound of muted conversation from. Their side of the line. Then the door to Penguin's office clicks shut.

'Anyway about that offer,' Jason starts again.

'I've heard you lost your technical support,' Penguin says.

'I'm listening.'

-

He finds her wedged into the space behind the couch, arms clamped around her legs so she looks like the world’s most dissatisfied egg.

'Tommy ordered us the restaurant, kid.'

'I don't want Thai food. I want my dad,' she says staunchly.

Jason sighs. 'I know, kid.'

'I know you said he needs to get better to come back for me but how is he supposed to get better if I'm not there?' She asks, voice tiny, cracked, words too fast out of her mouth.

'Oh, kid.'

'I've always been there for him! He needs me there because my mamma left and now I'm all he has!' She shouts into the tiny space.

It sucks. He knew this was coming. Saw it a mile away. Dreaded it. But that didn't prepare him for the moment at all. He has no idea what to do. How to comfort her.

'He got clean without you before,' Jason says softly.

'But how is he gonna do it this time?' She demands.

Slowly, he reaches out and presses the palm of his hand to the protective curl of her back.

'Come on,' he says. 'It's gonna be alright. You're not alone right now, and neither's he.'

'But things always go wrong when we're apart!' She insists.

'I need you to believe me when I say everything's gonna work out fine. I promise I'm gonna make sure everything is okay. Now come here to me, yeah?'

She doesn't move.

'I promise I have it covered. Just trust me, okay?'

'Okay,' she says into the wall, but she doesn't come out.

-

Tommy does him proud on arrival.

He's got a action plan drawn up to Jason's specifications and a few assurances the ball is in their court. 

First they move on the narrows. If Gotham had a groin they'd be it and every good street fighter worth his salt knows strength is summoned from the pit just behind your dick. After that it’s a rapid crawl outward through both Mid and Down Towns. Talia might have her claws in Gotham but between Bruce's little army, and Jason calling in his unoffiliated peers she would be shaken off soon enough.

He tucks Lian into bed with the promise that everything will be over in a few days and then they'll get her father back in no time. He's probably lying but it makes her smile. The story he tells her that night is a grand prediction of their reunion that definitely won't come true. But he wants to see her happy.

It makes him understand a bit more why sometimes Bruce would lie to him when he was younger. And maybe he can find a little forgiveness in himself for that.

Probably not. Bruce still pisses him the fuck off.

Which is what he’s thinking about as he climbs onto the roof and calls the man.

Bruce picks up with a stiff, tired sounding, ‘Hello?’ almost like he doesn’t believe the lies his caller id hallucinations are feeding him tonight and Jason almost hangs up right there but this is important.

Innocent people could die without Bruce’s help.

He takes a steadying breath that’s more noticeably shaky than he’d like it, and he can hear Bruce swallow over the line in the minute space between that sound and his words, ‘There’s going to be a sweep. The Narrows out into Mid and Down town. Four days from now. Dusk. Lethal force will be authorized.’

A beat of silence. Batman, and Jason can tell the difference even over the phone, grunts. It’s a thank you. ‘I’ll move the civilians.’

The line clicks dead and he exhales a breath he almost knew he was holding but refused to acknowledge. There’s something so wholly comforting about that. No feelings. No words between them. Nothing but the facts. Necessities. The assurance that everything will be taken care of.

No matter what. Regardless of anything at all. The two of them, Batman and Robin, be damned.

The rubber on the soles of his shoes squeaks quietly as he steps down onto the corrugated metal of the stairs. And he gets this odd feeling. Niggling. Like something’s off but he can’t see anything that possibly could be. An odd awareness of something unknown.

It snaps out fast and hard like a vice and a viper had a sinful twist with consequenses, and clamps right down on his throat. 

He squwaks as it reels him in backward, metal glinting in a sliver of distant street light. 

The voice in his ear is familiar, but twisted. Something once friendly but now hostile. ‘You have thirty seconds to tell me where my daughter is.’

‘Aw fuck.’


	10. Ambush

‘Start talking, Jason.’

He’s not even wearing his helmet so when he turns his head to see the man it’s with nothing but his own eyes and it feels naked. Raw in a horribly uncomfortable way.

Roy is worse for wear. He’s unshaved, and his hair’s a bit longer than it was even last time they saw each other. Red roots growing back in.

‘Well if I just start talking you aren’t gonna like what I say,’ Jason quips. 

Roy shakes him a bit, loosening his stance, and his balance on the floor, and when he talks next his lips are ghosting along the shell of Jason’s naked ear which is far too intimate for the situation they’re in. 

‘Spit. It. Out.’ His voice comes out too hard and too wrecked by the roughness of his throat, reading halfway to an order out of Batman’s mouth itself.

Jason has to curtail a mental impulse to actually spit in order to be capable of responding. 

‘You look like shit, Red,’ Jason says instead. ‘Where’ve you been the last week, huh? Dumpster diving in paradise with your ex?’

‘Shut the fuck up, Jason. I should kill you,’ Roy hisses.

‘You should thank me,’ Jason corrects. ‘Without my help, and my support your daughter would have been through a lot worse right now.’

It pisses Roy off enough that he throws his weight behind his prosthetic and pushes Jason as hard as he can by the back of the neck into the wall in front of them.

Jason makes a muffled sound as his cheek is ground into painted brick, hands scrambling on the rough surface. And then Roy's pressed to his back and he really has to focus now. Focus.

‘You kidnapped her!’ Roy shouts.

Jason’s stuck between almost wanting to enjoy his position and looking desperately for a way out.

‘We talked about this, Roy,’ Jason hisses. His voice is hoarse through the tight ring of metal around his throat which is helping nothing but he refuses to think about it. ‘About you needing time to get clean.’

‘What I need,’ Roy says too loudly into his ear. He smells like booze and jones-sweats. ‘Is my fucking family!’

Jason manages to wedge his own fleshy fingers around Roy’s, and lessen a bit of the preassure so a burst of blood flows into his brain, and summons everything he can into slamming the knuckle on the back of his skull into Roy’s bared teeth.

It hurts both of them. Roy shouts something incoherent or not English, Jason’s not quite sure which, and stumbles leaving Jason to catch his bearings against the wall.

‘You just don’t get it do you?’ He asks, voice still cracking. His neck aches around the effort it takes to speak and he knows he’s gonna have bruises for at least a week which really makes him wish he was wearing a cup right now because he’s having Boner Robin flashbacks.

He stands, stumbling a bit, while Roy rolls onto his knees, pain tolerance shot by his own withdrawal symptoms. The world feels way too far away from his oxygen deprived and then flooded senses. He’s too light on the flat roof beneath him.

‘I’m here for you!’ He shouts and his knee has that shake he knows way too well from fighting Bruce when he swings his leg out into Roy’s stomach. ‘I’m here for your fucking kid! I’d do anything to make sure you’re both alright!’

Roy groans, and rolls over onto his back. His face is gaunt from the lack of nutrition. He’s thinner than he’d been when Jason had last seen him clean. He looks as broken as he undoubtedly feels.

As the small, ‘Fuck you,’ he hisses sounds.

But Jason’s not paying attention to him anymore. He’s paying attention to the clues Roy’s laid out for him in his ritualistic cries for help.

‘I’d make any decision I deemed necessary to pull your pride out of this intact,’ he promises, taking a a knee so he can crouch over the other man. Roy’s eyes flash a kind of confusion as they make a much softer form of contact but he doesn’t move. He’s still. Almost frozen as Jason reaches down, and unlatches the holster on the gun under his left arm.

Roy swallows as Jason slides it back. This had been part of the flirting game they’d played once. Because Jason is always too shy about fucking when he’s not talking to a client but he’s never been shy about playing with another man’s guns. He can smell it as much as he can see it in Roy’s eyes.

He’s not the only one kinda turned on right now which is as reassuring as anything can be in this situation. 

The gun levels out so nicely. It’s balance is perfect. No pull forward or back, and it feels light in his hand even though it’s heavy. He tests his grip on it. Rests it on the skin of Roy’s forehead like a priest would bless a baby, and he clicks the safety off.

Roy closes his eyes in this resigned kind of way, which thankfully kills Jason’s boner entirely. How long ago had his brains been the ones plastered on concrete? It’s not a pretty thing to think about. 

And he’s always liked Roy.

He’d rather make out with the guy than blow his head off with one of his really cool souped up guns. Which beside all these points Jason has always wanted to actually use.

She’s not that bad a gambler though. The sound of her tearing through the fabric of reality behind him to nick him with those claws puts an abrupt end to their fucked up little role play session. And by shocked gasp she makes when his left index finger pulls down on the trigger of Roy’s other gun, he completely got her with the theatrics.

‘I’d even fucking kill your crazy wife!’ He shouts, turning on her as fast as he can. She’s already gone but the blood on Roy’s pants tell him he at least nicked her.

Roy bats the first gun out of his hand then, sending it skidding into the wall he’d been slammed against and down the stairs. 

‘You’re never gonna take my family from me,’ he hisses, throwing Jason back into the door.

God it’s so predictable this shit got them back together. It’s enough to make a guy wanna hurl.

Jason pistol whips him for the mental image and scrambles down after the gun, feet fumbling over the edges, bare hand blistering from the friction of sliding against the safety rail.

‘You piece of shit!’ Roy hollars after him.

Which is so true. It’s just spot fucking on honestly.

Jason hears a metalic screeching sound and looks over his shoulder to see Roy quite literally ripping the metal door from the wall with his prosthetic arm. He takes the briefest of moments to wonder what the fuck kinda clock the man gets on the drivers in that thing but knows he can’t wait around to watch this feat of engineering if he wants to have a face in the morning.

The roof door clatters against it’s twin on the next landing’s door jam just as he rushes through it.

He wishes he had his helmet like nothing, but that’s not the situation he’s in. 

There’s another soft thwipp sound as Jade reaches out of thin air for another grab at him, obviously not too injured. He narrowly avoids running eyes first into her claws, and stomps on her foot before aiming at her stomach and missing entirely because she’s not fucking there anymore. 

The boom of the shot echoes through the hallway as it takes out three entire tiles in the floor. His ears are ringing like church bells, and he’s sure he’s swearing up a storm but he can’t fucking hear himself. Which all means the damage is done so he shoots the floor again and drops through it to buy himself a little time in their game of cat and mouse.

It’s almost silent past the high pitched shrieking in his ears as he launches himself into another stairway. His head is spinning but he doesn’t bother stopping to catch his bearings. Roy’s sure to be hot on his tail and if he isn’t Cheshire probably knows where he is. He needs to be lost fast.

Tommy’s sure to have heard the shots right?

He’s not the world’s best marksman but he’s a heavy combatant. Not quite as heavy as Roy. Damn. Jason should have already thought this through he should have-

He stops just out of the door on the next landing down, and looks back over his shoulder at the supply closet he’d raided a few days ago.

He knows it’s fucked up and evil. Has to whistle at himself as he moves to do it to ward off the guilt.

They probably won’t find him in here for a second if he closes the door. Just long enough for his childhood trauma to guide him through filling four syringes with methadone. 20 cc’s each.

Then it’s just placement.

He needs it to be obvious. Eye catching. 

Tommy’s room is only a few hundred feet away. All his gear heaped up in the closet.

He hears Roy in the stairwell. Through the walls. The sound of his footsteps shaking the foundations as he thunders down on Jason’s position. 

‘What the Fuck is all the racket?’ Tommy demands, peaking his head around the door of the surgery suite that he sleeps in, and for all that Jason hates his guts sometimes he’s happy as fuck to hear his voice.

‘Mama and Papa bear have found the porridge!’ He hollars, waving at Tommy to duck back inside the bedroom.

‘Well that can’t be good,’ he hears Tommy say as he barrels in. The man casually flips the switch for the blast shield like it’s a normal occurrence to be sieged. ‘I’m sure you’ll be happy to know I secured your package,’ he adds, pointing to the bed where Lian is sitting on the duvet with her stuffed penguin.

She looks nonplussed.

Jason runs his hands through his hair. ‘You got her?’

‘I assumed you would be upset if-‘

‘Tommy, you selfish fucking bastard, I could kiss you!’ Jason shouts. He doesn’t actually do it though, just lets the other man stare at him blankly as he fists and unfists his hands in the air.

‘I just- I need to think for a second, okay and not about the fact that you apparently legitimately worry about upsetting me because that’s a whole other can of worms- I need a plan and the two of us together, we’re good plan guys so give me a plan,’ He continues almost too fast to follow himself.

‘Well what’s our status?’ Tommy asks.

‘We’re being attacked,’ Lian says. 

‘Yeah,’ Jason cuts in. ‘Papa bear’s big time pissed and out for blood, but I left some picknick baskets in the hallway outside that should distract him. Mama bear’s a whole other issue because she has a teleporter so if she finds out we’re in here nothing is keeping her out.’

‘Are you talking about my mom?’ Lian asks.

Jason holds out a finger, ‘Wait a second sweetheart because there’s something I need you to understand: your mom is crazy and you are not going anywhere with that bitch.’

She blinks at him, shrugs her shoulders, nods as if she’s mulling over a statement of particularly sound judgement and says: ‘Okay.’

Jason let’s out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. ‘Okay good, wow.’

‘Anyway, we need to get rid of Jade and contain Roy,’ Jason decides, turning to Tommy again.

Tommy rises his eyebrows impetuously. ‘Oh so they have names now.’

‘Shut up and give me a fucking plan!’

-

The ticking of his tongue echoes oddly off the walls of the hallway. Amplified by the emptyness of the building. 

Her head swings around. Movements beastial as she tries to track his noise. He can see she’s bleeding from the temple. God if he’d just been a little better with that shot this would all be cleared up by now.

He’s still taking this game from cat and mouse to cat and bird though. 

She’s honestly not that fast and a little heavy on her feet when she’s not popping in and out of existence. Her reaction time is great but she’s only a cat and he’s still a bird.

Once you get that hit of Robin in you it’s there forever. That’s what Tim failed to realize when he got himself sucked into all this. What Dick knew even as he packed his shit and stormed out of the manor for good.

Jason had felt it the moment Bruce handed him the suit. And he can feel it in him still. Different than it was before he died. Bigger. More evolved. More technical and precise with Tim’s additions. Angrier with Damian’s blood hot in the drippings.

Those are the bits he pushes aside. He reaches for Dick’s luck. Their flight.

He lets go of the wall.

She twitches beneath him. Flat footed, but nervous. They feel each other in just the right way he almost wonders what the league gave her. What monsters they hid under her skin. Are their other places with gods like Gotham’s?

The air in the room drags languid and almost silent over his helmet as he falls, tucks his legs up, hands out, ready to land on her.

She reacts the second before he hits her and they both go tumbling over the floor, scrambling at each other. Her claws rip into the heavy fabric of Tommy’s trench coat, catching on the lycra and kevlar mail lining. One of them rips right off at the bed and she shrieks at him. 

‘You fucking faggot!’ She shouts. ‘You steal my child right out from under my nose! Drug my husband!’

‘To be fair, Jade, there’s not a maternity law in the world that could convince me you deserve to be a mother,’ he quips, leveling one of his old pistols at her.

‘You bitch!’

She slams her shoulder into it, throwing his aim wide so he lodges a bullet in the ceiling. There’s a dizzying moment as he catches his balance so he can throw his shin into her stomach. 

The wind knocks out of her in a soft whoosh. She’s gone a moment later with another one.

‘Fuck,’ he hisses into the silence. He’s gotta scram fast so she can’t find him.

Another hiss and she’s back, right behind him. His brain does a weird flip of anxiety as he ducks, and the sound of Tommy’s 50 calibers would be literally deafening if he wasn’t wearing protection now.

She shouts before she snaps out of reality again.

‘Tell me you fucking got her,’ Jason hisses, looking up at the man jammed into the doorway of one of the public rooms.

‘Shoulder,’ Tommy says with a srug.

‘You fucking idiot. Can you aim for shit?’ Jason demands.

‘Should be bad enough that she needs to get herself patched up before she can give us anymore bullshit,’ he says.

Which is exactly when she pops back in and treats the bandages on his face like a goddamn cat tree. 

Tommy shouts, firing wildly in front of him, which only scatters her back into the either.

‘Tell me you’re not fucking bleeding,’ Jason says.

‘A little bit,’ he admits. 

‘You fucking asshat you better hope we fucking manage to catch her now or your ass is dead,’ Jason tells him.

‘You don’t know what kind of pois-‘

Before Tommy can finish the sentence she slips back into the hallway, and kicks Jason in the face. He’s sent reeling backwards, but manages to catch her in the thigh with a bullet.

It brings her down and she falls like a sack of shrieking bricks.

‘Ha!,’ he says. ‘That’s what you fucking get for not wearing any body armor!’

‘Oh and you’re so fashion forward,’ she hisses through gritted teeth, pressing already bloody palms to the new bullet hole. ‘In your trench coat.’

‘At least I only have the holes I was born with,’ Jason brags.

‘You mean the holes your daddy used to fuck you in?’ She asks.

Jason takes the liberty to kick her in her bleeding shoulder and she groans, curling in on herself almost fitfully. 

‘Give me your fucking antidotes or Dr Elliot over there won’t be able to patch you back up, kitten.’

‘I’d rather watch him suffer,’ she manages.

‘And never see your daughter again after coming all this way?’ Jason asks, ‘I’m sorry, Jade. I don’t believe you’re metal enough for that.’

She tries to spit in his face but it just splatters uselessly against his helmet. Then she’s gone again.

‘Fuck!’ Jason roars.

Tommy’s finger is in the air in splits of a second, demanding silence. A beat. Quiet. Then they hear movement in one of the nearby rooms.

She’s in there, a mess of limp bloody limbs, willing herself to continue moving somehow. Roy is prone beneath her, clearly unconscious.

‘Roy, wake up! We have to go now, we need to-‘

‘Stop touching him, Jade,’ Jason says as he grabs the teleporter off her belt. Tommy gives it an appraising look as he slips it into his pocket but he’s not paying attention to the peripherals. He has to keep every bit of his attention and his gun trained on her.

She freezes for what it’s worth, so Jason gestures to Tommy. ‘Go get her patched up, search her robes for antidotes and just take all of them or whatever.’

‘That might be stupid,’ Jade warns.

To which she gets the very witty retort of, ‘You might be stupid,’ from Jason.

‘Sounds like a wonderful prognosis,’ Tommy chirps as he cups his hands under her arms and hoists her onto the gurney. ‘Jason if you would-‘

‘Little busy,’ Jason snaps. ‘She’s not going anywhere without that damn mini boom tube she loves so much.’

‘Right then,’ Tommy says curtly. 

Silence falls over them once more as he leaves the room.

Once again, Jason takes a knee over Roy, checking his breathing, checking his pulse. Both there and strong. He adjusts a bit and rolls the man onto his side, rubbing a hand along the crest of a shoulder blade.

‘You fag birds,’ Jade chastises weakly from the bed. ‘Always swooping in to try and steal him, huh? What do you even want from someone so useless anyway?’

‘Shut-up, Jade,’ Jason says flatly. He doesn’t need to point out her hypocracy. She’s smart enough to know she’s dragging herself.

She laughs at him. ‘You have feelings don’t you, Jason?’ 

It feels so wrong being addressed by his name in that moment. It’s like a cold dead hand running the length of his spine and he almost wants to vomit. 

‘Don’t like it when I use your Christian name?’ She teases. 

He refuses to respond to her. He has nothing to say.

Tommy’s back in a few moments later with supplies in his arms and Jason deliberately tunes it out as the man gets to work.

Roy doesn’t look like he’s overdosing but it’s hard to tell when Jason doesn’t know how many of those syringes he found. This is so stressful. He hasn’t sat over someone like this since he was a child and doing it now brings all that weight back.

He needs to wake the man up and set his mind at ease. He one hand each under mismatched arms, and drags him toward the tiny bathroom. 

Stuffing Roy Harper in a hospital shower is difficult. He’s a lot of man for such a small space. Especially unconscious.

The pipes shudder ominously before bathing both Roy and Jason’s arms in cold water.

Roy wakes up almost instantly, hazy and out of it. ‘Wha-‘

‘Shut-up, tell me how much you took,’ Jason says.

‘Well I can’t do both can I?’ Roy jokes and it’s so stupid. It’s so stupid and reassuring, and well timed Jason actually fucking laughs. Not hard. Not like he laughed when Tommy put him on speakerphone earlier today. But it’s a good laugh anyway. Soft and dry.

‘How much did you take?’

‘Well there was two pretty girls and I think I took them out to dinner,’ Roy mumbles.

‘Just two?’ Jason asks.

Roy gives him a confused but almost hopeful look. ‘Why are there more?’

‘No,’ Jason lies, running a hand through his hair to wick the moisture through it to his scalp. Get some of that sweat off him.

Roy hums thoughtfully to himself, brain obviously trying to tick on even through the opioid haze. ‘Isn’t Lian here?’

‘Yeah,’ Jason says. ‘And you can see her as soon as you’re feeling a little better.’

‘Promise?’

‘I swear, Roy.’


	11. Advice Clinic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> if you like my art, I’ve uploaded a few older Jason and Jay/Roy pieces in earlier chapters. They don’t really correspond or the story but I drew them while writing it and I don’t post art on tumblr anymore and wanted to put them somewhere. I have new one I finished a few days ago but it really didn’t fit the mood of this chapter lol.

Tommy gets the sweats after giving Jade her stitches and has to sit down. Which leaves it to Jason to argue with her for the antidote. By the time he finally gets it off her, Tommy’s half unconscious and looks worse for wear in just about every way. Skin swallowed and fevered. His eyes keep rolling back in his head. Jason gives it to him intramuscularly above the bones of his jaw because he’s honestly not sure what he’s doing but it seems reasonable to deliver the dose close to the infection site in a similar way.

Once he’s through with it he sedates Jade and hauls Roy onto the other gurney in the room. 

Tommy’s regaining cognizance by the time he has them all seen to and situated and he’s strapped them into their beds.

‘Quite a night,’ he says as Jason’s turning to leave the room. 

‘Yeah,’ Jason agrees. ‘I’m gonna go check on Lian, you mind wheeling the ginger cyborg outta here once you’re feeling a little steadier on your feet? I don’t want them colluding.’

Tommy waves him out with a short, ‘Fair enough.’

His head hurts like a bitch so he takes the helmet off. It’s probably whiplash from that kick to the face Jade gave him. He’s wondering if he can get his insurance company to bill her for that when he makes it back to the the surgical suite. 

She’s waiting for him in the closet where he left her.

‘What happened?’ She asks.

‘Your mother and father are both in custody. They’re sleeping it off in the general patient rooms a few hallways over,’ he explains.

‘Are they okay?’ She asks.

‘Your dad should be fine once we can start weening him off the drugs. Your mom’s a little banged up but she’ll live.’

‘Did she get hurt?’

Jason gives her a half shrug. ‘Couple of through and through shots but we patched her up nice and good, and Tommy’s a doctor so she’ll be fine in a week or two.’

She doesn’t look too happy to hear that but he’s not about to justify his actions to her. Somehow it just feels like that would be patronizing. 

‘When can I see them?’ She asks then, face buried into her arms. 

‘How ‘bout tomorrow?’

She sighs heavily and pushes herself up by her knees with a small, ‘Okay.’

Obviously not what she wanted him to say.

‘Let’s go get you some food, yeah?’ He presses.

She shakes her head though. ‘I think I’d rather just sleep so it’s tomorrow sooner.’

It leaves a bad taste in Jason’s mouth but he can’t think of a legitimate reason to stop her so he takes her downstairs and tucks her into bed.

The soft sounds of a silent Gotham take the room as she doses off. The heart beat of abandoned buildings with neglected facades. Ambient noise from the scratches of rat claws in walls. Childhood lullabies from the Narrows.

Tommy’s waiting for him by the stairs, arms crossed and face bare. He’s got this expression that’s half miffed, half inscrutable.

And for a second he’s almost as Gotham incarnate as Bruce. Body reposed against the wall. The haughty angles of his shoulders and hips. Jason can see straight down to that vein that runs from every citizen born here into the earth and lets the city itself remake them in its image. 

It stops Jason before he manages to cross the entry. Makes him laugh softly to himself. ‘Something the matter, Tommy?’

‘Well I might’ve preferred you tell me about-‘ He trails off gesturing up the stairs.

Jason follows the movement with his eyes, laughing a little harder.

‘-your ginger friend.’

‘Oh, Hush now, are you jealous?’ He teases.

There’s some contraction in Tommy’s face, backlit by the flouresants in the stairwell, and Jason can see it even from here. ‘How could I be jealous when I don’t know anything about it?’ He asks. The words sound flat though.

‘Finely chosen words there, Tommy,’ Jason says as he continues his advance. 

Tommy regards him skeptically, body pushing even further back into the doorjam but when Jason reaches out it’s just to pat him on the arm. 

‘Suppose I gotta reward you for this one, huh?’

Tommy regards his hand a moment, and when he looks back up at Jason’s face the expression he’s wearing is dejected. Like a kicked puppy. It’s pitiful. But in a way that makes him want to be sympathetic.

‘That would be,’ the man starts and trails off a moment before concluding, ‘nice.’

It’s probably just that he’s fucked up. Jason doesn’t really need to know that much about Tommy to know he’s fucked up. Still it’s not often he feels anything but disgust for the man. Or anyone really.

Looking Tommy bare in the eyes is already an emotional labor he’d rather avoid but he muscles through it.

It has to be some kind of guilt. An awareness of the inherent difference in their worth and how Tommy could never actually make it up. Could never come close to Roy even if their differences were mainly circumstantial.

Tommy knows better than to try with him. Even now with his emotionless exoskeleton chipping away from the soft fleshy bits inside, and all those insecurities that Jason can finally see laid bare. 

They aren’t unfounded. Tommy’s never been afraid of a single thing that didn’t happen. And even now, nestled somewhere between a pretty bat’s legs, no one will ever love him.

They both know that from the time Tommy backs him through the bedroom door to the time Jason’s sitting up in bed next to him as he dozes off, trying to forget what his mouth tastes like.

He tells himself it’s stupid as he gets up and squeezes back into his jeans. No proper business man would sit around worrying about the ethics of fucking one ginger for money while considering fucking another for free because they don’t matter.

What he should be considering is how Roy found him. And if Jade’s tipped anyone else off to their location.

If there’s backup he needs traps, and he needs them yesterday.

It’s eerie alone in the slums. A few rats scamper in the dark just past his night vision sensors as he works. That convenient little hole he’d made on the 6th floor is happily ready to be made into a pitfall. He’ll need to pick up some supplies tomorrow. Bricks. Mortar. A few miles of wire. The usual shit.

If only Roy wasn’t incapacitated. 

By the time Jason’s even ready to think about sleep the sun is rising. Tommy finds him in the kitchen with a pot of coffee looking miserable and redeyed.

‘Didn’t sleep?’ The man asks.

Jason musters the energy he can to laugh at him. ‘Do I ever?’

‘Well, I’ve gotten a call from dear Oswald. Seems the plans are best laid. He’s sending someone over in a truck soon with some supplies,’ Tommy explains.

‘What kinda supplies?’

Tommy shrugs. ‘Well guns mostly.’

Wordlessly Jason pushes the skematics he’d drawn up for traps last night across the line counter. 

‘What’s-‘

‘This place felt a little under fortified last night,’ he explains. ‘If we’d spent more time preparing and less time dicking around-‘

‘Oh so this is my fault now?’ Tommy demands.

Jason gives him a quick once over. ‘Yeah. I think it fucking is!’

‘Excuse me, but I’m not the one who kidnapped the child of two super spies and tried to hide her an a delapitaded hospital in crime alley with a deranged former surgeon who makes his money brokering organs,’ Tommy snaps.

‘Well for-fucking-give me for trying!’

‘That’s the problem with you, Jason, you’re always trying to help but you never slow down to ask people if that’s what they want.’

Jason smashes his coffee mug against the counter, and brandishes the broken handle in Tommy’s general direction. ‘Sometimes what people want and what they need are two totally different things.’

Tommy sighs at him like he couldn’t be more tired of the posturing or the fact that there’s hot coffee all over his kitchen. ‘Oh right. That’s Batman’s crusade isn’t it? Dragging miserable people kicking and screaming against their will into happiness.’

Jason gives him a hard glare, slams the front of his helmet down, and marches out of the kitchen, throwing an ‘I expect you to handle Penguin’s men when they get here!’ over his shoulder as the door slams behind him. 

What does Tommy know anyway? He’s never helped a single person for anything other than personal gain in his entire life. And that includes preforming life saving surgeries on dozens of patients. He doesn’t care about people. He cares about money and putting himself ahead.

He doesn’t understand that sometimes you can’t wait for people to want your help if you want to save them. Roy’s never gonna want anyone’s help but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need it.

Jason pushes in through the door to Roy’s room, and stands against the jam for a moment, wondering if he should really wake him. It’s a long, silent moment. Gotham ticking by around them, muffled like a swaddled clock.

Jason walks into the room. His boots sound heavy on the lenoleum even with their rubber soles. 

Roy shifts in his sleep, pulling against the restraints gently.

‘Hey,’ Jason starts and has no idea what to say next.

Roy jumps, and turns bleary eyes on him.

‘Jason?’

Jason lays a hand on his shoulder. ‘Yeah, man. You get good rest?’

‘Would have been better if I wasn’t shackled to the bed,’ Roy gripes, rattling his restraints for emphasis.

‘Well as long as you promise not to try and kill anyone, I can promise to let you loose,’ Jason says.

Roy gives him a look like he’s crazy. ‘What? Why would I promise you anything, you’re a kidnapper!’

‘Alright,’ Jason says. So he’s not going to be absolved that easily. ‘Well if that’s the case,’ he slams a gloved hand into Roy’s forehead, rattling the gurney with the back of the man’s skull.

‘Ow, what the fuck?’

‘That’s for making me have to get involved like this, asshole! That’s for forcing me to separate you and your daughter, which I never wanted to do! Because you can’t provide anything close to a stable environment right now so I had to do it for you! Using this as an opportunity to hook up with your mass murdering ex instead of getting clean to take care of your child? What the fuck are you thinking?’

The look on Roy’s face is the exact same kind of shocked blankness Jason’s come to expect from Tommy after he busts a nut. It’s far from cute. It takes some of the animosity he currently feels toward Tommy and redirects it.

‘What did you do with Jade?’ Roy asks then, looking around frantically.

‘Nothing but I should have fucking killed her!’ Jason rages. ‘I didn’t for you, which goes against every moral fiber in my body, and you should be fucking greatful I give a damn because you know Dick wouldn’t be out here busting his ass for you like this!’

His knuckles look like they’re going to bust through the backs of his gloves, the way he’s tight fisting the bed’s railing, but Roy’s still staring at him with a mix of defiant incredulity, and fear.

‘Why do you care?’ He asks quietly.

Jason snarls. Stops. Looks around for words in the air. Rips his helmet off, and drops it. Which leaves him feeling even more vulnerable and exposed but this is important.

‘You opened your home to me,’ he hisses, looking everywhere but at the man on the bed next to him. ‘When I was at my lowest, you offered me help, and a place at your table with your daughter- who’s really cool by the way- and I owe you.’

‘You owe me kidnapping my child, and strapping me to a gurney?’ Roy asks.

‘You didn’t give me much choice,’ Jason tells him. ‘I just hope, while you’re here,’ he puases to fill a syringe, ‘Detoxing. You can look at the situation and understand.’ He turns to Roy, stretches his left arm out straight and doesn’t even need to tie him off. ‘If at the end of all this, you’re clean, away from Jade and still pissed at me: that’s it.’ The needle slides in seemlessly and he starts to slowly depress the plunger. ‘You never have to see or hear from me again. You can take Lian and go back to your life and I’ll go back to mine.’

‘Just like that?’ Roy asks.

Jason nods. Then bends over to pick his helmet back up. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t able to handle all this better,’ he says, voice swinging wildly as he shoves the helmet back on and the voice modulators distort it.

‘Me too,’ he hears Roy mumble behind him.

Once he’s out in the hallway there’s no holding it back anymore. Tommy’s right. He’s fucking this up somehow. This is all fucked up. Why did he ever think he could make a positive difference? He’s not Bruce. He’s not Batman. No one has ever wanted his help. He’s a fuck up. A failure. A dead kid that was too fucking stupid to stay dead. The entire world’s rejected him already and he keeps coming back for more. 

He finds his way back up to the roof, and sits on the edge, watching Tommy direct Cobblepot’s men, turning his cellphone over and over again in his hands. Part of him wants to call Bruce, and cry about it like he would have if he was still Robin but he hasn’t been Robin for five years. 

He’d be 20 now if he’d never died. He’d be a grown man. Even now, accounting for the two year lag, he’s 18. He doesn’t have excuses to be running home to a father figure that doesn’t even want him.

Then he thinks about calling Dick because Roy likes Dick right, and it’d be better to have him choose the lesser of two exes. But he doesn’t want to do that either.

Maybe he’s wrong trying to separate Roy and Jade in the first place. Maybe a family should be together. 

He thinks about his own childhood. Parents locked in an eternal cycle of warfare and romance, making the house into a battlefield or a honeymoon suite with no thought for their children. Was he better off there than on the streets, selling his time to strangers? At least with that it’d been some choice of his. Money forces everyone to toil in distress. It might have been the wrong thing, at his age, in his position but was it really worse than living at home?

No.

So if that was true, being with Bruce, somewhere between a real lover and a house boy. That was wrong, but it had been better than the streets and lightyears better than being with his parents. 

No matter what confusion he has about it now he can’t deny there were times with Bruce where he healed. Where he grew. Turned into someone he maybe wanted to be instead of someone who was stuck in the slog of day to day survival, unable to think about the details of life like contentment or morality. 

He turns away from the roof, and walks back downstairs, accompanied by the monotonous press of his boots on the stairs. A deadened, untraveling sound even in the quiet.

Jade is awake when he looks in through the doorway of the room where she’d been left. Her eyes are wide open, staring at the ceiling, and her teeth are bared.

‘Come to gloat?’ She asks.

‘No,’ Jason says simply.

She laughs. Lifts her head up off the table to glare at him from above a hideous deformation of a smile. ‘You really think he’ll choose you over me, the mother of his child,’ she pauses, and her face grows cold as she looks him up and down again. ‘Something you could never give him.’

‘You know?’ Jason says. ‘That one might have worked on Dick. But you’re off your mark here. I just had something I wanted to ask.’

A flicker in her placidity tells him he’s caught her off guard.

‘What?’ She asks flatly.

‘If you gave up being in your daughter’s life for her own safety when she was a baby, what makes you think she’ll be safe by your side now?’

‘Shithead!’ She shouts, wrenching at the restraints on her wrists. ‘You think I’m selfish don’t you? But you don’t fucking get it! I would do anything for my daughter! I would die for her.’

Silence. They watch each other reproachfully.

She continues: ‘I gave her to Roy because I thought his life was safer than mine, and it was. Until he got himself wrapped up in all that Justice League bullshit! When he was a Titan that was one thing, but when Prometheus came after them, that damn junkie couldn’t do the one thing he promised me, the one thing I asked from him in honor of what we had. He couldn’t protect her, and we lost her. You don’t know what I’ve been through to get her back.’

Guilt tastes like the moment of regret at a frat party as your beer pong losses creep up your esophagus. He shuffles his feet to square his stance. 

‘Does it occur to you what kind of influence your presence might have in leading your daughter into the same traps you always fall into?’ He demands.

‘What difference does it make? Roy’s the slut damsel between the two of us, not me. He feels alone, rejected? First thing he does is fall in bed with whoever he wants approval from. She’ll learn it from him regardless. You wanna be involved? You wanna take my place? You think you’d be a better fit there than me? You’re pathetic,’ she finishes, dropping her head back onto the bed.

He doesn’t have anything left to say to her. He doesn’t have anything left to do other than dig his heels in because no matter what anyone says he has this feeling. He just knows. This won’t go well if he lets it come to pass.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically entirely unedited but i’m posting it as is for now because my life’s been so crazy idk when i’ll Be able to finish the whole shebang

The day treks on and so does Jason. Shifting clouds make their flight across the Gotham sky, momentarily obscuring the sun behind their billowing wings. Throwing shadows over the vans penguin’s men fit onto the only vehicle access road in the whole complex of crime alley. 

Once, trucks had used it to drop off medical supplies at the Sacred Heart. Now they’re unloading weapons and supplies.

Preparation goes quickly with a staff of gangsters, some who have felt, all who know his reputation for ass kicking. A few of them give him no good dirty ass looks and he knows it’s probably because they lost a buddy, a brother, a sister under the tide of the Red Hood. They don’t know how unsacred death is. Aren’t fully aware of it’s clawing inevitability.

Once, when he was young, and childish, Bruce had told him, ‘We spend our whole lives believing that somehow, in the end, we’ll thwart death. Sometimes, for moments, we do. But death is a smart predator. It waits for its chance and pounces the moment you feel sure that its truly beaten.’

He only thought that way because it was a beast he didn’t know.

Bruce never conquered death. He doesn’t know what’s deep down inside it. The darkness. The endlessness. The color.

Missing the fallen is pointless. They were dead the moment they were born.

The clouds spin by outside. 

He’s in one of those angsty philosophical moods that strikes when he’s sober and sleep has left him to fend for himself. The feeling that he’s not alive, or dead or anything but simply in hell and that’s why it never seems to end is growing from a needling pain pressed constantly into the back of his skull into something all encompassing. 

Tommy has him sit down with an inhaler when he looses his breath yelling at one of the grunts. He sips on it spitefully. Watches tommy with distain as he continues his placid direction.

It doesn’t take him long watching people stumble around incompetently with boxes to decide he needs to find another way to occupy his ever increasing time. Hand over knee and ankles pushing uncomfortably into his heels he pushes to his feet and trudges up the stairs.

The room he hid Roy in is dark. He can see the outline of ruffled blankets on the bed. Sunlight filtering in through the blackout curtains. 

He’s cautious as he enters. Feet rolling heel to toe slowly, rubber soles sucking up the sound of their impact. He doesn’t want to upset the man like he did earlier. He wants to talk well. Make sure everything’s okay. That Roy will pull through this time.

Roy isn’t in the bed. There’s a pillow stuffed under the blanket lazily. The cuffs are hanging off the railings limp and useless but without any signs of struggle or forced exit.

Tommy jumps as Jason comes storming back down the stairs. ‘Where’s Lian?’ He demands.

‘Well I haven’t seen her all morning,’ Tommy explains to the indifferent facade of Jason’s mask.

Jason huffs, turning to the room at large, and hollaring: ‘Oi, anyone seen a girl? Yay high, black hair and killer cheekbones?’

The room, regards him cautiously Before collectively dissenting. 

‘Fuck,’ Jason gripes.

‘You might check her room,’ Tommy suggests.

‘I will but I doubt she’ll be there.’

Tommy gives him a sideways look through the bandages that screams ‘raised eyebrow’ but Jason can’t see it. ‘Why?’

‘Harper’s fucking missing.’ Jason hisses.

‘Oh goody so we have an angry heroin addict running around my hospital with his houdini daughter, and apparently roughish sex appeal, doing god knows what with my scripts.’

‘What’s that now?’ Jason demands.

Tommy sighs and waves and arm in the general direction of the stairs. ‘Just go find him before he overdoses in my needle pantry.’

‘I’m doing that, but in the future can you keep your cuckishness to yourself while we’re in the fucking workplace?’ Jason throws over his shoulder.

He hears a quiet ‘noted’ and he begins tuning everything out to make himself a list.

The map of the hospital in his head. Like Bruce taught him. He can almost feel the man’s hand on his arm as he pulls it up into his conscious mind. Hear his voice guiding him through the process like the ghost of Batman past. Factoring in every new variable Jason has been made aware of through observation.

The main entrance and first level of the building are swamped with men. Two mentally and physically unprepared prisoners making a run for it from the third floor are likely to attempt a ground exit. But Roy’s not a civilian and neither is his daughter.

He makes a beeline for the stairs.

This leaves only a few scenarios. First they hide and wait out the flood of bodies, making a retreat as the doors are closing. 

Any closed room gets opened. He needs to be quick but thorough. Efficient. Like a machine.

Second, they pull the same gambit but attempt to kill you. Third-

He passes Cheshire’s room, looking in to see her still lying where he left her, and hauls her out, covering her protests with a gloved hand and hoping the leather is thick enough to stop her teeth.

-they randevous with their companion and kill you. 

He wheels her into the elevator and sends it down to the garage.

Fourth, they find the transporter and grab Cheshire and pop out of reality with no trace of where they ended up.

Further and further up the stairs 

Fifth, they forego rescuing their whole party and attempt to escape via the roof exit.

Of course that’s where he finds them.

Lian is clutching Roy’s waist, looking tiny, and terrified next to him, as he tauters, bow-less, without a grapple, on the edge of the roof, considering the jump to the nearest roof, four stories below them.

His brain does some weird sort of backflip and his mouth actually shuts down. It’s one of the few times in his life he’s ever found himself speechless. No witty retort. Nothing biting to say.

After a moment of horrible, awewrenching silence, he manages to stutter out a meager, ‘Don’t’. It comes out warped and mangled through the voice modular, loosing all vulnerability in the process and turning into a scathing hiss.

Roy’s Head snaps to him. Eyes wide, and blue like cold water, red hair falling into them as it dances on the wind. He opens his mouth to say something, and it’s bound to be scathing but Jason holds his hands up.

It all stops. The three of them stop.

Below them, the men toil on unaware. Tommy directs them, trusting it’ll all be cleared up.

Jason reaches for his helmet again. It’s vulnerable, but he can’t imagine this working without him showing the truth.

‘Please step down onto the roof,’ he says, and this time it’s honest, and the fear isn’t completely covered in his voice. 

Roy’s eyes harden. ‘What if I jump.’

The idea of them broken on the gravel top of the next apartment building over, or the street, with Penguin’s men gathered round looking on like idiots. It intersperses with half rememberances of his mother’s body on the bathroom floor. Suicide.

Panic in his throat and behind his eyes.

‘Just don’t do this,’ Jason says, and it’s too close to begging for his comfort but he doesn’t know what else to do.

Roy presses his foot against the edge, and leans into it a bit.

The ground below them is too hard. The men too indifferent. The height to great. 

Gravel crunches under Jason’s feet as he rushes forward.

‘Just stop it Jesus Christ, give me the girl!’ He insists.

And Roy does listen, becuase he’d never actually put Lian in danger.

She reaches out to Jason almost as desperately as Jason reaches out to her. She’s heavy in his arms. Warm and breathing. And he remembers his little sister so vividly when he’s near her he can almost remember what she looks like.

His eyes stay on Roy as he retreats, holding her like precious cargo against his chest. And Roy watches him back. Moves with a casual, cocky, clumsiness that dares him to believe he has any type of power in this situation after laying his cards on the table like that.

Fat lot of good honesty does anyone. 

Especially when it’s shown in the face of a fucking power play.

Jason should have known Roy would have to be good to escape relationships with both Nightwing and Cheshire. He should have expected this kind of shit.

Bruce is laughing in his head.

God, he thinks, this is something Bruce would have done too. 

‘Fuck you,’ Jason hisses as Roy passes him back through the roof access, metal hand trailing on the frame of the door he ripped off its hinges the night before.

‘You wish,’ Roy says softly.

The shame is painful and sudden. Like being slammed repeatedly into a wall face first. He instantly feels sick, and wrong. Lian looks confused as he hurriedly sets her on her feet and whipes his palms on his pantsalmost like he can dry the sweat there through his gloves.

‘Come on, we gotta get down stairs,’ he tells her.

He ignores her offense. It feels like there’s something under his skin. Writhing.

Roy makes no attempt to pull shit as they walk back down. He’s a bit chatty even, almost as if he’s made every point he’d wanted right then and there.

Jason’s going over everything he knows about this guy in his head as Roy asks what the men are there for.

‘Oh, that’s cool,’ he says nonchalantly in response to the explanation. ‘Keeping Talia away, huh?’

‘Yeah, she’s not exactly happy I broke off our contract and stole one of her assets,’ Jason agrees. 

Lian pulls a nasty face at the wording.

‘Well I’m down to kick some ass,’ Roy says in this tone that let’s Jason know he’s jonseing again. Not for opiates but for a knockout.

‘Gear up then,’ Jason mumbles. 

And it’s right then that Roy does this little swivel, points at him over Lian’s head and mouths ‘hit me’.

Jason points to the girl. Mostly because he really doesn’t wanna do that shit again or even touch Roy at all right now and he’ll take any excuse. 

It gets him a glare from the other man but the topic is dropped.

They end up in the lobby, Tommy glaring at them, men rushing around with equippment.

‘Someone’s apparently found a lady in the elvator,’ Tommy says imperiously.

‘Tell them she belongs there,’ Jason snips.

‘Shame I’ve already had her moved then.’ 

Jason sighs, ‘Probably for the best.’

‘I see you’ve brought your friends, the Harpers,’ Tommy observes then.

‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ Roy demands.

Silence beats out a moment, two. Jason can tell Tommy is blinking incredulously under the bandages by the shake of his head.

‘That’s Dr. Mummy,’ Lian interrupts factually. ‘Jason’s sucking his dick for money.’

A few of the penguins men stop to watch like they’re seeing a car crash. Roy shoots him this look that’s all judgemental amusement. Tommy holds his hands out welcomingly.

‘From the mouths of babes,’ he says fondly. ‘Have I told you how fond I am of your daughter? You I could loose though bit awkward having two redheads and all that.’

‘Not funny,’ Roy says through thinned lips.

‘And here I heard you were the type for banter,’ Tommy accuses. 

There’s a cue of hapless helpers lining up around them now either procrastinating their current tasks or left without direction on what to do next.

‘Not until I’ve had my morning coffee,’ Roy hisses. The look he gives Jason could kill.

Jason ignores it. 

But Tommy sweeps a hand over toward the kitchen, ‘I’ve just made a pot.’ There’s just enough suggestion in his voice to get Roy to go with him.

Jason watches them leave with a feeling of unease settling in even deeper under his skin.

The room goes unearthly still and quiet. Lian stares after them with him. Eyes cold and hard. Detatched almost. 

She knows they’re not getting coffee.

She also knows exactly what she did saying that. 

‘Gotta gear up for world war redhead,’ Jason quips at his audience.

‘I did hear gays only like to date themselves,’ someone Jason can’t see grumbles only just loud enough to be heard in the pindrop silence of the room.

Jason doesn’t bother with the pendantics or explaining that the red helmet isn’t a symbol for his hair color. Or with sticking around any longer. 

He walks Lian into her bedroom and sits down on the visitor’s chair by her bed, takes his helmet off again.

‘How long is this gonna last?’ She asks.

‘Until it’s over I guess,’ he tells his reflection in the back of the shiny red dome.

‘I can’t stand it.’

‘Me either,’ he agrees.

‘I’m tired.’

‘Me too.’

There’s a beat of silence. She watches him and he looks at everything else that’s not her.

‘My mom did a lot of bad things so we can;t be family together,’ she says suddenly and Jason has to look at her then.

Her eyes are piercing, fixed right on him and wide with red, sleepless rims. ‘I don’t want that to happen to my dad.’

‘I’m trying,’ he tells her. ‘But it’s never been this bad before. He’s never been this sick.’

She nods, eyes drifting out of focus onto some point ove this shoulder as she recalls something. ‘I think it hurts.’ Her fingers drift aimlessly to her right arm. ‘He winces when he walks now and he grabs at it when no one’s looking.’

Jason presses the backs of his knuckles into his lips and listens to her insight because better than anyone else she’d know.

‘He used to tell me when I was little that when he was young he was in pain so he did drugs to stop it but it was the kind of pain he should have talked about. Only what happens when you can’t just talk it away anymore?’ Her fingers are knotted in the blankets but the time she’s done speaking and Jason finds himself speechless again. 

‘What if he can’t get better this time?’


End file.
